Key Takeaways
- Snapchat Family Center helps parents monitor their teenager’s online activity, providing insight into friends, chats, and more.
- Parents can set up and access Family Center to track their kids’ Snapchat interactions, with some limitations based on age.
- It’s important for parents to teach kids safe online practices, including connecting with known individuals, careful username selection, and in-app reporting.
Over the years, social media apps have added parental controls to help parents manage their teens’ online presence. So if your kids use Snapchat, here’s how you can use the app’s parental controls to protect them online.
What Is the Snapchat Family Center?
As the name suggests, the Snapchat Family Center is aimed at giving parents more insight into who their teens are friends with on Snapchat, without actually turning Snapchat into a spying app. Snapchat says it’s designed to “reflect the way parents engage with their teens in the real world,” in the sense that you’ll know who your kids are talking to, but not the content of the conversations.
There are some age restrictions in place before you can use the feature though. Your kids need to be between 13 and 18 years of age, and you, the parent, need to be 25 years or older. Eligible parents get access to the following features:
- Seeing which Snapchat friends their kids have chatted with in the last seven days.
- A list of group members in group chats their kids have been involved in over the last seven days.
- A full list of existing and new friends on their kids’ Snapchat accounts.
- Limiting their kids’ ability to view certain content in the Story and Spotlight tabs.
- Disabling the My AI feature from responding.
- Viewing their kids’ birthday settings.
- Reporting any accounts parents might be concerned about directly.
As you can see, Snapchat’s Family Center doesn’t give you complete control over your teen’s account but does provide enough safety and monitoring features for you to be able to keep an eye out.
Accessing and Setting Up Family Center on Snapchat
You can access the Snapchat Family Center via either the “My Friends” section on your profile or the “Privacy Controls” option in your account settings. Alternatively, you can just search for “Family Center” or related terms in the search bar, generally seen on top of most in-app screens on Snapchat.
From there, select your teens’ username in your friend list to send them an invite. Once they accept, you’ll instantly gain access to all the features mentioned above. Just make sure you’re using the latest version of the Snapchat app, your child is added as a friend on your account, and that you both comply with the aforementioned age limitations.
Do keep in mind that these invites are sent as direct messages to your kid’s Snapchat inbox, meaning they’ll automatically get deleted either immediately or 24 hours after your kid has viewed it, based on your kid’s disappearing messages setting. So make sure to remind them to accept the invite in real life.
Teens automatically age out of the Family Center once they’ve turned 18, so if you don’t see your kid’s profile showing up there, make sure to verify their age settings. The feature isn’t available in all countries either and kids can also leave the Family Center any time they want.
Another thing to note is that the preventive measures in the Family Center, especially the Restrict Sensitive Content setting, might not always work. If you’ve enabled restrictions for sensitive content, it just reduces the likelihood of this content appearing on your kids’ accounts. It doesn’t fully protect them as some pieces of content might slip through the cracks.
The same applies if you’ve disabled My AI for your kids, although this setting fares a little better. Your teen may still be able to send messages to My AI and see when others mention it, but Snapchat’s built-in AI bot won’t respond to or process your child’s queries and will not be able to respond to them unless you let it. And if you’re annoyed by Snapchat’s AI as well, here’s how you can remove My AI from your account.
Kids are informed when you change major settings that control their access to content. However, reporting accounts is totally anonymous and doesn’t inform the account you reported or your teen when you do so.
Tips for Protecting Your Kids on Snapchat
Snapchat’s Family Center goes a long way in helping keep your kids safe online. That said, over time Snapchat has added a ton of features like non-skippable ads, My AI, and even a TikTok-life video feed, so it might be worth checking out an alternative app for sharing photos with friends.
You should also be teaching them how to be safe online on their own. Here are some tips to help you out.
1. Connect With the Right People
Always encourage your children to only connect with people they know from real life. Although Snapchat requires either a phone number or username before you can add someone, it’s not that difficult to find this information. Teach your kids to keep their phone numbers and usernames private and only share them with people they know.
However, keeping contact information private isn’t always possible, and things like phone numbers and usernames can get leaked. It’s best practice to not accept friend requests from unknown people online, whether your kids are using Snapchat or any other social media app.
2. Watch the Username and Birthday
Make sure your kids choose a username that isn’t very suggestive of their real-life identity. It’s nice to be creative once in a while. Having a unique username reduces the likelihood of someone looking up your kids on Snapchat with information that might be publicly available, which might just be the deterrent to keep uninvited individuals away.
Since Snapchat doesn’t verify the age someone puts in when creating a new account, it’s also important that you verify the birthday your kids enter when making their accounts. Keep in mind that there are age restrictions on Family Center settings, so if your 14-year-old makes an account posing as an adult, you won’t be able to monitor their Snapchat profile through the app’s features.
3. Use In-App Reporting
Another important aspect of being safe online is reporting anything suspicious you or your kids come across on the platform. While Snapchat allows you to report groups or friends added in your kids’ list via the Family Center, you should talk to your kids and ensure they’re comfortable reporting anything that they shouldn’t be seeing. Remember, reports are fully anonymous and the reported account doesn’t get informed when they were reported or by who.
Staying safe online is not very complicated and you should avoid some social media mistakes if you want to protect your privacy and that of your kids. All it takes is some common sense and awareness.
