On Tuesday, Snap Inc., the company behind the well-known messaging app Snapchat, released its first set of parental control features. Parents can use these features to keep an eye on who their kids are chatting with on the app, but not the actual content of those chats.
The launch of the new Family Center feature coincides with criticism of the major social media companies for not doing more to safeguard children online. In evidence given in front of American senators in October, TikTok, YouTube, and Snap were charged with exposing young people to bullying or exposing them to harmful content.
Instagram also testified in front of a Senate panel on children’s online safety in December in response to the disclosure of internal documents by a Facebook whistleblower that purportedly suggested the app had a negative influence on certain children’s mental health and body image.
Parents can view their children’s friend lists and recent message recipients when teens accept an invitation to join Family Center on Snapchat. Teenagers can be invited to join Family Center on Snapchat by their parents. Those accounts can also be reported anonymously if they trigger any red flags.
In an interview, Jeremy Voss, Snap’s head of messaging products made the claim that the private information or the sent/ received messages will not be available for the parents to see thus maintaining some anonymity.
“It strikes the right approach for enhancing safety and well-being, while still protecting autonomy and privacy,” he said.
Snap announced that it will roll out more services in the upcoming months, such as notifications for parents when their adolescent detects user abuse.
Before the launch of Family Center, Snap already had several teen safety policies in place. Snapchat users under the age of 18 have private accounts by default, and when two users share friends, that user’s profile will appear in search results as a suggested buddy. The minimum age for a user to register on Snapchat is 13 years.
Instagram’s Family Center, which was introduced in March of this year, allows parents to monitor the amount of time their teen spends on the platform and the profiles that their teens follow. This feature is quite similar to Snap’s new feature.
About Snapchat
Snap Inc., originally known as Snapchat Inc., developed Snapchat in the United States as a multi-media instant messaging service and software. Snapchat was founded by Reggie Brown, Bobby Murphy, and Evan Spiegel. The three collaborated closely over several months before launching Snapchat as “Picaboo” on the iOS platform on July 8, 2011.
In September 2011, the application was rebranded as Snapchat.
SnapChat’s major feature is that pictures and messages are frequently only shown to recipients for a brief period of time before being removed from their view.
There were 347 million daily active users of Snapchat worldwide as of the second quarter of 2022.