Understanding Snapchat's New Parental Controls and Family Center Feature

Snapchat has unveiled new parental controls within its new tool, the Family Center, to make the social app a safer environment for its young users.

After months of development, amid their commitment to Congress that the platform will make improvements, the new features have now been unveiled so that parents may keep track of their kids' online interactions without hovering or eavesdropping on private conversations.

Nona Farahnik, the company's policy director, told NPR that the Family Center had been based on real-life parenting. For instance, parents usually join their kids at the mall if they want to go out with their friends, but the mother or father won't usually sit with them and listen to their conversations.

Snapchat's parental feature works in the same way in that they will be able to see who their teens have been communicating with for at least seven days. This tracking is an important improvement since Snapchat messages may only be accessible for 24 hours.

In designing the new feature, Snapchat consulted with academics, safety experts, and focus groups composed of parents. The Family Center feature is only for parents who have children under 18 years old.

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How to activate Snapchat Family Center

According to Fox29, parents must sign up for a Snapchat account and link it to their kids' profiles. Once this has been set up, they can look for the Family Center feature under their Profile Settings and configure it to their preferences.

The company prepared a step-by-step guide below to help parents become familiar with the feature. Ideally, the Family Center may have over 25 family members and trusted guardians or carers linked.

Snapchat said the Family Center would have more features in the coming months. For instance, the platform still lacks a feature that can detect if the teens create an alternate account that their parents do not know.

For now, aside from keeping track of who their children have been chatting with, the parents may also see new profiles of their children added to their list.

Snapchat's move to clean up the app for kids

At the core of its interface, Snapchat's disappearing messages after 24 hours make it easier for kids to display inappropriate behavior on the social networking app. For this reason, Snapchat has had several lawsuits filed by grieving parents whose kids were bullied on the app.

Following a probe in Congress in 2021, Snapchat said it would revamp its policies to provide a safer place for teenagers. Since the probe, Snapchat has been making some changes for its young users.

According to CNN, the company has required teens to be mutual friends before they could communicate on the platform. Users who are minors are also discouraged from having public profiles so they won't attract stalkers.

Snapchat Global VP Jennifer Stout, however, said that they need to do more work. Aside from the stalking, bullying, and sexting issues that have besieged the social app, Congress also pointed out that drug dealers also use Snapchat.  

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