Snapchat today is rolling out its first set of parental controls, after announcing last October it was developing tools that would allow parents to gain better visibility into how their teens used the social networking app. The update follows the launches of similar parental control features across other apps favored by teens, including Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
To use the new feature, known as Family Center, parents or guardians will need to install the Snapchat app on their own device in order to link their account to their teens through an opt-in invite process.
Once configured, parents will be able to see which accounts the teen is having conversations with on the app over the past seven days, without being able to view the content of those messages. They’ll also be able to view the teen’s friend list and report potential abuse to Snap’s Trust & Safety team for review. These are essentially the same features TechCrunch reported earlier this year were in development.
Parents can access the new controls either from the app’s Profile Settings or by searching for “family center” or related terms fro …
