As more social media companies improve child safety on their platforms, Snapchat is today launching a new supervision tool that mimics how parents and teenagers interact in the real world.
ALSO READ: How to get the new premium Snapchat Plus
Using the new “Family Center” hub, Snapchat allows parents and guardians to keep tabs on who their teenager’s messages on the app without disclosing what it is they’re saying to each other. Both the guardian and the child must accept the Family Center invite before the oversight tools can take effect. Once the invites are accepted, a guardian can see the entirety of their child’s friends list and a list of accounts they’ve interacted with over the last seven days and report concerning accounts to Snap’s Trust and Safety Team.
“Our goal was to create a set of tools designed to reflect the dynamics of real-world relationships and foster collaboration and trust between parents and teens,” Snap said in its Tuesday blog post. The feature is meant to copy real-life relationships, like when a parent lets a kid’s friends come over but doesn’t monitor everything they say.
Snap plans to roll out new Family Center features over the next few weeks, including tools allowing parents to view the new friends their children have added along with additional content controls.
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23930258/cbfm8m74w8w46nr3s3m884t.png)
This move by Snapchat comes after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked internal documents that disclosed how Meta’s platforms can harm young users, some of the largest tech platforms were called in to testify in October 2021. Among YouTube and TikTok was a representative from Snap before a Senate committee last October.
In January, Snap launched a feature limiting the number of friend suggestions teenagers see on its app, via its Quick Add menu. According to the company, kids between the ages of 13 to 17 only receive suggestions for accounts that “have a certain number of friends in common with that person.”
