Snapchat’s vanishing picture app will be safer for kids and teenagers. The app’s Family Center, which will roll out in the autumn, will include additional capabilities including letting parents see who their children are chatting to.
“Snapchat is a crucial communications tool for young people, and as our community grows, we recognize parents and caregivers want more tools to keep their teenagers safe,” Snapchat stated Tuesday. The corporation worked with families and professionals to build “additional safeguards” for adolescents as young as 13 years old.
The Family Center app enables parents to monitor their children’s accounts.
The Family Center’s main page has three options: check the child’s pals, see who they’ve messaged in the previous week, and report abuse or safety concerns. The feature won’t let parents watch their kids’ chats.
“Family Center is meant to mirror how parents interact with their adolescents in the real world, where they know who their children are hanging out with but don’t eavesdrop,” the business stated. “…We want to empower parents and kids while protecting teens’ autonomy and privacy.”
Snapchat will soon allow parents to view new friends their children have added. This autumn, the firm will add content filters for parents and a mechanism that notifies parents when kids report a problematic account or material.
Snapchat’s adolescent users now have the Family Center. Teens must be mutual friends to chat on the app, and they have no public profiles. Their profiles only appear in Snapchat’s “recommended friend” section or search results in “limited scenarios,” Snapchat stated, such as with a common buddy.
The revelation came days after New Jersey Democrat Josh Gottheimer presented the CHATS Act. The measure would add online crime data to the federal crime reporting system.
Gottheimer claimed the law “combats social media preying on our children” in a July Facebook post and webcast. “These firms’ lack of openness and responsibility has hurt our families and nation,” he added. Laura Berman and Samuel Chapman, whose 16-year-old son overdosed after purchasing fentanyl-laced Xanax on Snapchat, also appeared on the broadcast.
Berman argues in a PSA that her kid could purchase narcotics on Snapchat as easy as pizza. “They were brought to our house spiked with fentanyl without his knowledge. So he died.”