Snapchat has launched a new tool called Family Centre which allows parents to monitor who their children are connecting with and chatting to using the app.
The new feature does not show parents the conversations, it simply lets you see who they are talking to. To set this up, parents will need their own Snapchat account to access the Family Centre dashboard. Parents can then see who is interacting with their child and report any accounts they are concerned about to Snapchat’s Trust and Safety team without alerting their child.
Once you have snapchat, you will need to add your children as friends (remember they may have more than one profile!) and then navigate to the Family Centre option under Privacy Controls.
You can find the Family Centre by opening Snapchat, then tapping on your face icon (top left of the screen), and then tapping the settings wheel top right.
Scroll down to Privacy Controls and you will see Family Centre at the bottom. From there you can send invitations to your children’s accounts. They will need to accept the invitation before you can see who they are communicating with.
Once accepted, you can see who they have been chatting with by going back into the Family Centre using the steps above.
This is a step in the right direction by Snapchat however the app is not supposed to be used by children younger than 13 yet there is nothing in place to verify the age of users so many children far younger than this have accounts created with false birth dates.