After being developed for a couple of months, Snap, the parent company of the active social media platform Snapchat, finally announced a release. The platform released a new set of tools specific to parental control that will allow better monitoring of their teens using Snapchat.
Snapchat has its history of being criticised for not being safe enough for kids or transparent enough for parents. To cater to this need, Family Center is its latest solution for making Snapchat a more trustworthy platform.
Snapchat explains this tool as-
“Family Center is designed to reflect the way that parents engage with their teens in the real world, where parents usually know who their teens are friends with and when they are hanging out – but don’t eavesdrop on their private conversations. In the coming weeks, we will add a new feature that will allow parents to easily view new friends their teens have added.”
Family Center enables parents to keep a note of their teen’s friend list and also the people who Snapped in the past week. It also gives parents the authority to file a report in case they find something harmful.
However, the feature also raises questions on privacy which stands as an important matter of concern for the users.
To encounter this concern, the Head Of Messaging at Snap explains, “It strikes the right approach for enhancing safety and well-being, while still protecting autonomy and privacy,”
We’re expected to see more updates on this feature that will further enhance its safety measures. Snapchat further adds, “… including new content controls for parents and the ability for teens to notify their parents when they report an account or a piece of content to us. While we closely moderate and curate both our content and entertainment platforms, and don’t allow unvetted content to reach a large audience on Snapchat, we know each family has different views on what content is appropriate for their teens and want to give them the option to make those personal decisions.”
But, we’re yet to figure out if this tool proves to be a success or do teens switch to a different platform completely, not giving up on their privacy.
