New Snapchat Tools Give Parents More Control

Snapchat has today announced several updates to its “Family Center” tool, designed to help parents understand how their teens are spending their time on the app and who they are talking to, without reading their private chats.

The biggest addition is a new dashboard that shows exactly how much time a teen spends on Snapchat. In the past, parents had to guess how long their kids were glued to their phones. Now, Family Center will show the average amount of time spent on the app each day over the previous week.

It goes deeper than just a total number of minutes. Parents can see a breakdown of which features are being used the most. This includes:

• Chatting and Snapping: How much time is spent messaging friends.
• The Camera: Time spent creating photos and videos.
• Snap Map: How long they are looking at the map to see where friends are.
• Content: Time spent watching Stories or scrolling through the Spotlight feed.

Snapchat says this is meant to help “spark a dialogue” about healthy habits. Instead of just telling a teen to “get off their phone,” parents can now have a specific conversation about why they might be spending three hours a day on Spotlight.

Knowing who your child is talking to is a top priority for most parents. Family Center already showed a list of a teen’s friends, but it didn’t give much context.

With this update, when a teen adds a new friend, Snapchat will provide “trust signals” to the parent. You will now be able to see if the new friend is a mutual contact, if they are already in your teen’s phone book, or if they belong to a shared community like a school.

These new features will help parents feel more confident that their children are interacting with people they actually know in real life.