This is how Snapchat wants to make its app safer for children

Snapchat today announced Family Center. This allows parents or caregivers to gain insight into their child’s friends and contacts. This is done with the consent of their child. Snapchat wants to take a new step towards a safer internet with Family Center.

1. Why a Family Center in Snapchat?

In the Netherlands, Snapchat reaches more than 90% of all young people between the ages of 13 and 24. This large group of young Snapchatters is still growing. That’s why Snapchat wants to provide extra security for teens through its new Family Center in-app feature. Family Center gives parents and/or caregivers insight into who is friends with their children on Snapchat and who they interact with. They cannot see the content of those conversations. All this is done with the consent of the teenager.

Snapchat worked with experts and several families to create the feature. Family Center is designed to reflect the real world situation, according to Snapchat. So the way educators interact with their kids in the real world, and where they (usually) know who their teens are friends with and when they see and talk to each other — but don’t know the content of conversations.

2. This is how Snapchat Family Center works

Parent(s) or guardians who want to use Snapchat Family Center, first invite their child to the Family Center app. Once the child approves the invitation, the parent/guardian will see the child’s friends list and contacts. Do educators see accounts that may be a problem for their children? Then they can report it anonymously to Snapchat’s Trust and Safety teams.

In the coming months, Snapchat will add more features to Family Center. For example, there will be an option for parents/carers to filter third-party content on Discover and Spotlight. In addition, teens will soon be able to notify their educators when they report an account or content as unwanted.

3. When will Snapchat Family Center be available in the Netherlands?

Family Center is available today in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Family Center will also be available in the Netherlands at the beginning of October. Recently, Snapchat also introduced its subscription service that allows users to be the first to get started with experimental Snapchat features. This service is also not yet available in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Are you a parent or guardian of a teen on Snapchat? Will you be using Family Center as soon as it becomes available? Or do you think that is not necessary? Let us know in the comments.