Family Center: Snapchat finally launches Parental Control 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦🛡

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Snapchat announced on Tuesday, August 9 the official launch of its parental control system called « Family Center ». This new feature, aimed at strengthening the protection of minors. A real giant step from this firm.

Why Parental Control ? 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦📱

Parents are right to be concerned about their children’s presence and activities on social networks. They, like us, are not safe from sexual predators, inappropriate content, toxic influences, cyber-harassment, fake news, conspiracy theories, dangerous challenges… The threats are numerous, and the platforms are on the radar of the authorities, like TikTok and its sometimes deadly challenges.

L’année dernière encore, l’affaire des « Facebook Papers », des documents publiés par la lanceuse d’alerte de Facebook Frances Haugen, a pointé du doigt les réseaux en soulignant l’impact toxique qu’ils pouvaient avoir sur les plus jeunes (Lire l’article complet) – comme la propagation de théories du complot et des fake news (Lire l’article complet), ou encore la suggestion de contenus violents et toxiques.

Just last year, the « Facebook Papers » affair, documents published by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, pointed the finger at the networks by highlighting the toxic impact they could have on younger people (Read full article) – such as the propagation of conspiracy theories and fake news (Read full article), or the suggestion of violent and toxic content.

Many platforms and social networks have provided users with numerous tools to ensure their safety, especially for minors. But are we sure that parental controls are the solution? In fact, what could be THE solution? This is the question we all ask ourselves.

Monitoring without compromising privacy☺🕵🏾‍♀️

After activating this option, adults will be able to see the accounts to which their child has sent messages, photos or videos in the last seven days. However, they will not be able to see the content of the exchanges.

« Family Center » also gives them the ability to access their child’s friends list. If necessary, parents will be able to report potential abuse or profiles they deem suspicious to Snapchat’s security team.

Source: Snapchat

To activate this monitoring system, adults will need to install Snapchat on their own smartphone and link their personal account to their child’s.

Strengthen security on social networks👨🏾‍✈️👩🏾‍✈️

This update comes at a time when Instagram, TikTok and YouTube have implemented their own parental control solutions under pressure from users demanding better protection for minors on the various social networks.

For good reason, internal documents, put online by the Wall Street Journal last year, have detailed the deleterious effects of Instagram on teenagers forcing the subsidiary of Facebook to react (Read our article on the subject). In this context, Snapchat should, in a future update, expand « Family Center » with new control options.

The launch of Family Center coincides with Snapchat’s push to increase safety for its users. Later this year, it plans to expand parental control options with enhanced content management features and alert options for minors. Child safety on social networks has become an important topic in recent years, and Snapchat seems to have it figured out!

What do you think of this new Snapchat feature? Any improvements to suggest?

Source: Snapchat