As Snapchat is widely used by teenagers today, it has become imperative for parents to have some form of control over the way their teens use the app. If you have a young teen using Snapchat and are worried about what they are up to, Snapchat’s Family Centre is a feature to help you.
While it is crucial that no boundaries are overstepped, the concern of parents is more than understandable. Snapchat recently launched the Family Centre feature, allowing parents to view how their children are engaging with the app. Parents will be able to see who all their kids are interacting with without having access to the specifics of their conversation.
What are the Benefits of the Family Centre Feature?
The Family Centre feature will enable parents to report accounts that seem sketchy to them to Snap’s Trust and Safety teams without their children knowing. This ensures that kids on the app are not receiving any form of unwanted attention while using the platform.
Parents will be able to access this feature by logging on to their Snapchat and using a link to connect them with their child’s account. Snapchat is a platform that gives importance to the protection of minors on the platform. The platform also understands that the needs of families differ from one to another. Snapchat explains, “To help develop Family Center, we worked with families to understand the needs of both parents and teens, knowing that everyone’s approach to parenting and privacy is different”.
How to Set up Family Centre on your Snapchat
Once you have downloaded the app and made your account, you can go ahead and search ‘Family Centre’ using the option on the upper left corner of the app or go to Settings. You will find ‘Family Centre’ under Privacy Controls.
To add your teen, they should be friends with you on Snapchat and also between the ages of 13 and 18. Parents and Guardians older than 25 will be able to invite teens to their Family Centre. The teens will have to opt-in for parents to activate the connection.
Snapchat, through this feature, will help parents view the people their kids are friends with on the app and who they are talking to, and will also be able to report any account that does not look right to them. The content of the child’s conversation will be confidential.
Snapchat and Safety
Snapchat takes privacy seriously and has numerous measures set in place to make sure its users are safe. The well-being of its users is of crucial concern to the app; hence, instead of opening to a populated feed, it opens into the camera. The app aims to connect people in a healthy and friendly manner.
The Family Centre will soon be adding new features to improve the ways in which teens interact with people.
There are already specific measures taken to make sure teens are safe on the platform. This includes
- Teens will only be able to connect with mutual friends
- Teens are not allowed to have public profiles
- Strangers will not easily find teens on the app. They will only appear through Search or as “suggested friends”.
Snapchat explains that Family Centre “is designed to reflect the way that parents engage with their teens in the real world, where parents usually know who their teens are friends with and when they are hanging out – but don’t eavesdrop on their private conversations”.
Snapchat is used by young people all over the world, and it is beneficial to have settings available that will monitor the ways in which it is used. Parents can now relax a little thanks to the new ‘Family Centre’ feature available. Go check it out!
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