Olivia Cavallaro Tech 08.09.2022 03:Aug AM EDT

Snapchat's New Family Center Enables Parents to See Their Kids' Friends List

The social media and messaging app has rolled out their first set of parental controls to help monitor their kids' interactions online.

On Tuesday, Snapchat rolled out a new supervision tool that parent company Snap Inc. said would support child safety efforts online. The new parental control portal on Snapchat is called the Family Center, a new in-app feature that shows parents their children's friends list and who they have been messaging in the last seven days. While the parental control shows who the user had been chatting to, it will not show the chat history.

Engadget reported that Snapchat's new Family Center was designed to mimic the way "parents engage with their teens in the real world" in the sense that they are aware who their children are talking to or hanging out with, without eavesdropping on the conversations being shared. The new feature also allows parents to confidentially report accounts they deem to be violators of Snapchat's rules.

Snapchat Makes Good on a Promise to Introduce Parental Controls and Better Safety for Kids

Back in October 2021, Snapchat announced it was developing parental tools to provide parents with a better understanding of how their children are using the social media app, TechCrunch reported. The move to establish the Family Center, which is the first in several more features that Snapchat is working on, follows the launch of similar parental controls that are now present in a number of apps such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, which are very popular among youth.

In January, Shapchat also revamped its friend recommendation feature after the company was urged by users to increase safety on the app by making it more difficult for adults to connect with teen users. The company stopped recommending accounts owned by 13 to 17 years to other users in Quick Add.

In addition, Snapchat also disallowed public profils for teens and required them to be mutual friends with each other before being able to send messages to each other. Teens' accounts on Snapchat will only appear in search results in specific circumstances, such as if the user searching for them shares a mutual friend with them.

How Parents Can Use Snapchat's Family Center

Snapchat's Family Center is a completely voluntary feature and teens have the option to leave the portal if they decide to. They are also given the choice to accept or ignore their parents' invitation to join. Snapchat's Family Center was specifically designed for underage teens and those who turn 18 will automatically be removed from the parental controls feature.

For parents to use Snapchat's Family Center, they must install the app on their own device and link their account to their teens using an opt-in invite process. Upon configuring the feature, parents will be able to see the accounts their teens have been having conversations with on Snapchat in the last seven days without viewing the actual conversations. Parents can access the Family Center from the app's Profile Settings or by searching for the terms "family center" on the app's Search box.

Snapchat's Family Center is only available to parents and teenagers aged 13 to 18, as the app does not accept users below those ages. The development of these parental controls comes as the US government and parents across America and the world continue to call on Big Tech companies to improve on users' safety and security, The Verge reported.