In Family Center, parents cannot read their child’s Snapchat chat history.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — Snapchat launched parental control portal which allows parents to keep an eye on who their child is chatting with. A new in-app feature called Family Center shows a list of their kids’ friends and who they’ve messaged in the last seven days.
Parents can only see who their child is chatting with, but can’t read the chat history. According to Snap, these parental controls are designed to allow parents to engage their child in the real world when they know most of who their child is hanging out with.
In addition, parents can also confidentially report accounts they think may be violating the Snap rules from Family Center. In January, Snapchat changed its friend recommendation feature following calls to improve security on the app by making it harder for adults to connect with teenage users.
Specifically, Snapchat stopped showing accounts owned by users aged 13 to 17 in Quick Add. Teens also cannot have a public profile and must be mutual friends to be able to communicate with each other. Not only that, their account will only appear in search results under certain circumstances.
Snap promises to roll out new parental controls and other features designed to protect underage users in service last year. This comes as lawmakers put pressure on social networks and apps that cater to teens, such as Snapchat and TikTok to do more to protect children on their platform.
Reported Engadget, Tuesday (9/8/2022), Family Center is completely voluntary. The teens could always leave the portal if they wanted to. In fact, they will be given the option to accept or ignore the parent’s invitation to join. Because the feature is made for minors, users who are 18 years old are automatically removed from the tool.
The company plans to roll out more features for Family Center. This will allow parents to easily see the newest friends their child has added in the coming weeks. Over the next few months too, Snap will add content controls for parents and the ability for children to notify their parents whenever they report an account or content.
