Snap Inc. has announced updates to its Family Center, a feature first introduced in 2022, aimed at helping parents and caregivers guide their teens’ experiences on Snapchat. The new enhancements are designed to provide parents with more detailed insights into how their teens use the platform.
With the latest update, parents can now view the average amount of time their teen spent on Snapchat each day over the previous week. This information is further broken down by activity, such as chatting or snapping with friends, using the camera, exploring Snap Map, or watching content on Spotlight and Stories. According to Snap Inc., this data is intended to “help spark a dialogue about healthy screen time and online habits, giving parents concrete information to shape the discussion.”
Another new feature gives parents more details about their teen’s friend connections. Previously, Family Center allowed visibility into who a teen was friends with and any new friends added during the past week. Now, when a teen adds someone new, parents will also be able to see how their child might know that person—such as through mutual friends, saved contacts, or shared communities. Snap Inc. stated: “These trust signals make it easier for parents to understand new connections and have greater confidence that their teen is chatting with someone they know in real life.”
To support families further, Snap Inc. has created an instructional video explaining how to use Family Center tools and embedded its online safety program directly into the feature. The Keys: A Guide to Digital Safety is described as “an interactive course designed to educate teens and families about online risks and how to help protect themselves.” The company said it aims for this resource “to be a joint learning experience to strengthen communication between teens and caregivers about digital safety.”
Family Center continues to allow parents other controls including viewing their teen’s friend list and recent communications (without accessing message content), setting content restrictions, disabling access to certain AI features like My AI chatbot—and soon Perplexity search engine—sharing location within family groups, and reporting concerning accounts.
The company emphasized that these changes are part of ongoing efforts “to protect teens on our platform while giving parents and caregivers the tools to play an active role in their teen’s experience on Snapchat.”
