Snapchat has gone live with Family Center, its parental controls feature. The feature allows parents to see their children’s friends list and see who they are interacting with. The feature does not affect many other parts of the app.
The feature requires parents to be over 25 and create an account on Snapchat. After that, a parent can send an invitation, after which the child must accept it, Snapchat says. After that, the friends list is visible. Unlike many other social media, friends on Snapchat are not visible to the outside world.
In addition, parents can see who their child has been talking to in the past week. However, the content of those conversations is not visible. Also, parents have no control over who add their children as friends.
The feature is limited, as there is no content filter on Discover, Techcrunch reports. Algorithmically recommended content appears in Discover and Spotlight and, according to the site, includes material that closely resembles clickbait on the rest of the Internet, as well as videos with headlines and thumbnails designed to instill fear and content about porn and child abuse. Snapchat is available to teens ages 13 and up, and Family Center works for users ages 13 to 18. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel announced the feature’s arrival last year without giving any details.
