Snapchat expands Family Centre with new teen controls

Snapchat has added new Family Centre features that show parents how much time their teenagers spend on the app and provide more information about new friend connections.

The update expands Family Centre, a set of parental supervision tools that Snapchat introduced in 2022. The company positions the product as a way for parents and carers to monitor activity and adjust certain settings. It says the tools do not provide access to the content of private conversations.

Time breakdown

Parents using Family Centre can now see the average amount of time their teen spends on Snapchat each day over the previous week. Snapchat also provides a breakdown of how that time is spent across different parts of the service.

The breakdown covers chatting and snapping with friends, use of the Camera, Snap Map, and viewing content on Spotlight and Stories. The company says the figures give parents a clearer view of usage patterns rather than a single daily total.

Snapchat described the changes in terms of family discussions about screen time and online behaviour. The company also stressed that the additional information sits alongside its privacy approach for teens.

Friend context

Family Centre already shows parents a list of their teen's friends and highlights any new friends added in the past week. Snapchat has now added more context around those new connections.

Parents can see whether their teen has mutual friends with a new contact. The product also indicates whether the person is saved in the teen's contacts. Snapchat says it will also show which communities the two accounts share.

Snapchat frames the extra context as a way for parents to assess whether a new contact looks familiar. It also makes a distinction between visibility of connections and visibility of message content.

Setup resources

Snapchat has also released a new video that explains how Family Centre works and how to get started. The company says the resource gives step-by-step guidance for parents and carers.

The video sits alongside existing product materials and follows a broader trend of platforms publishing more onboarding content for parents. Snapchat has built Family Centre around opt-in supervision, with parents and teens linking accounts to activate the features.

Other controls

Snapchat listed a set of existing Family Centre options alongside the new insights. These include viewing a teen's friends list and recent contacts, setting content restrictions, and reporting potentially concerning accounts on a teen's behalf.

The company also said parents can disable access to My AI. It added that it will also offer the ability to disable access to "the AI-powered search engine Perplexity" in the future.

Family Centre also includes a location-sharing option, which Snapchat describes as a way for families to share location. Snapchat has invested in Snap Map features for several years, and location sharing has remained a sensitive area in teen safety debates.

Safety focus

Teen online safety remains a key issue for social platforms as regulators and policymakers scrutinise the risks associated with social media use by minors. Companies have increasingly developed parental controls and safety settings in response.

Snapchat said Family Centre forms part of its wider safety approach and that it introduced the product with "strong safety settings enabled by default." The company's latest update adds more reporting and visibility around time spent and new contacts, while maintaining that private conversations remain private.