Snapchat’s new parental controls features: Family Center

What do parents need to know about the new Family Center parental controls from Snapchat?

Parents, schools, legislators and online safety advocates have been pushing social media platforms to create robust parental controls so parents can help kids navigate the tricky areas of social media.

Snapchat launched a parental control portal called the Family Center as a result.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

1. What the Snapchat features are

2. Step by step instructions for how to set up the parental controls features

3. How to use the features from the Family Center to start conversations

4. Is this enough to supervise Snapchat?

5. Final thoughts and grade

Reminder - kids should be 13 years old to have a Snapchat account or they are violating Snap Inc’s Terms of Service and could get kicked off or reported.

What are the Snapchat parental controls?

The new features allow parents to do three things:

• See your child’s friend list

• See who they’ve chatted with in the last 7 days

• Confidentially report accounts that might be violating Snap’s terms of service inside the Family Center.

How do you set up these features? Step by step directions for setting up Snapchat’s Family Center

First you need a Snapchat account of your own. Your child can help you with setting up your profile.

Once you set up your account, you’ll want to connect with your child by clicking “add friend”. They’ll need to add you back.

Once you’re both connected, on the home screen you’ll click the magnifying glass at the top left and type in the search bar “Family Center”.

Select the yellow icon called Family Center.

Select your kids’ profiles and “invite” them to the Family Center. This is the tricky step - they have to accept your invitation, so you’ll want to stand next to them and explain why this is important and what you can see/not see with this feature. (They’re worried you’ll be able to micromanage every single conversation and see the details of all their messages. Assure them, you can’t.)

Once they’re accepted your invitation, you will see their profile at the top of the Family Center. When you click on it, you can see who they’ve messaged in the last 7 days and all the profiles they are friends with.

Here are some details on the Family Center directly from Snapchat.

How to use the features from the Family Center to start conversations with your teen

Here’s how to start conversations using these new features:

• The friend list - Look at the profile avatar (the cartoon picture), the profile name and any emojis and ask questions about the profiles you don’t recognize or the graphics that may be concerning. Go here for our article and here for our news report to learn more about emojis that signify drugs or drug usage.

  • Sample conversation: I see you’re friends with Luke Skywalker. I don’t recognize that name? Does he go to your school? Do you know him in real life?

  • Sample conversation: I see Luke Skywalker has a mushroom emoji next to his name. Hmmm, I know that’s sometimes a way to represent that you like or want psychedelic mushrooms or ‘shrooms. Do you think that’s what he’s doing here?

• Who they’ve chatted with in the last 7 days - Look at the profile avatar, name and emojis again and see who they’re most active with. (Same questions as above)

• Confidentially report accounts that might be violating Snap’s terms of service inside the Family Center - this allows you to report accounts that are under 13 years old or are inappropriate in some way.

Are these features robust enough for parents to be able to supervise Snapchat?

Nope.

Not at all.

What parents need is a way to “see” conversations that are inappropriate or dangerous. I’m talking about cyberbullying (whether your child is the bully or the child getting bullied), asking for nude photos, struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts, sharing content that kids shouldn’t see…

These Snapchat users are minors. Parents need to be able to supervise what they’re doing when they’re behaving badly.

That doesn’t mean all of a teen’s Snapchat messages should be accessible to a parent. Teens deserve their privacy. Teens also deserve supervision and guidance from parents when they need help, online or offline.

Lisa spoke on New Mexico’s KOAT News about the new Snapchat feature and how parents can use it for their families.

Final grade and thoughts on Snapchat’s Family Circle

The Family Circle is a small step in the right direction but it’s taken a long time to get even this far. It’s a token gesture so Snapchat can say they have parental controls, but they’re weak and don’t give parents the information they need to keep kids safe and healthy online.

No platform has given parents what they need to supervise - which social media platform will step up and be a leader?

Final grade C-