Snapchat is preparing to introduce a new parental control feature called Family Center. This feature allows parents to see who their teen's friends are through the app, who he's been messaging with over the past seven days, and more.
Evan Spiegel, Snap's CEO, first touted the feature back in October. He explained that it gives parents a better view of how teens use the service, with the hope of making them feel more comfortable with the application.
Snapchat is one of the last social media platforms to offer parental controls, although it is seeing heavy use among younger users.
In its NewFronts presentation to advertisers earlier this month, it noted that Snapchat now reaches more than 75% of 13-34-year-olds in more than 20 countries.
She also said 80% of the US population of Generation Z had watched at least one Snap Original.
The new Family Center feature allows parents to see who their son's friends are through the app. This feature is useful for parents because Snapchat's friend lists are not public, unlike many social networks.
Parents also see the people their son has talked to over the past seven days. But without displaying the content of those conversations. Parents are also able to help their child report abuse and harassment, if necessary.
The Parental Control feature works by allowing parents to invite their teens to the new Family Center within the app to start monitoring.
The recipient of the invitation has the option to accept or decline the invitation. This approach is suitable for parental control involving adolescents, as it respects their privacy.
Rather than allowing parents to spy on their teenage children, this approach ensures that both parents and child know about parental controls.
The images are early designs of the Snapchat feature, which is still in development and has not yet been published or tested. Products often change at this point before they are released to the general public. This means that the end product may look completely different.
Parental Controls Are Coming To Snapchat
Other large social platforms have launched parental control features and other age-appropriate experiences for younger users.
TikTok continued to develop its parental control feature after its in-app Family Pairing tool debuted in 2020.
The tool allows parents to associate their TikTok account with their child’s account in order to control account privacy, including suggesting it to other TikTok users, whether a child can use search, and who can view, comment on or interact with the child’s content, among other things. other. There is also an option to put the account in a more secure mode for users under 13 years old.
YouTube also launched parental control features as a test last year, allowing parents to choose between different levels of access to YouTube for teen users.
Instagram has tools for parents, also called Family Center. Its tools allow parents to monitor the time a child spends within the app, which accounts have followed the child's account, and more.
All platforms compete in the field of social media. But they each work a little differently, which shows what kind of parental control features are required.
In the case of Snapchat, minors within the app have to accept each other as friends before they can start messaging.
Minor accounts also don't appear in search results or as friend suggestions for another user, unless they have mutual friends. And they can't get public accounts. This means Snap won't need to roll out parental control features to control these kinds of experiences.