SAN FRANCISCO — Snapchat, the ephemeral messaging app, launched its first parental controls on Tuesday as social media platforms come under increasing scrutiny for exposing young users to potentially harmful content.
Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, said in a blog post that the new tools would show parents who their teens were friends with on the app and who they had interacted with in the past seven days. Parents can also report accounts their children are friends with if they violate Snapchat’s policies. Parents cannot see their children’s conversations in the app.
To access the controls, people need to create Snapchat accounts and be friends with their kids, who need to agree to the controls. The company said it would later introduce additional features, including one that will allow parents to see who their kids have recently befriended. Teens can also notify their parents if they report accounts or content.
“Our goal was to create a set of tools designed to reflect the dynamics of real-world relationships and foster collaboration and trust between parents and teens,” Snap said in the blog post.
Snap, Instagram, TikTok and other social media companies have faced questions from lawmakers, regulators and activists about toxic content on their platforms, leading some young people to say the apps have exacerbated eating disorders and contributed to other mental health problems. Snap has also been criticized for the way its app allows teens to buy drugs like fentanyl.
These issues gained traction last year after a former Facebook employee released internal documents showing that some teens seemed to feel worse about themselves after using his products, such as Instagram. Executives from Instagram, Snap, TikTok and YouTube later testified in Congress about whether social media harms young people. In March, a group of prosecutors asked Snap and TikTok to increase parental controls on their apps.
Other countries have also taken measures to protect young people from the effects of social media. In September, Britain introduced new child safety rules, prompting platforms such as Instagram to introduce its first parental controls. Instagram parental controls allow people to see and limit how much time their kids spend on the app.
Snap has also recently struggled with a declining business. Last month, the company reported its slowest quarterly growth on record amid a weakening economy and challenges to its advertising business.
Snapchat parental controls will add to existing restrictions on how teens can use Snapchat. Teens currently need to be mutual friends to message each other in the app, and their profiles and friend lists are private. The app requires users to be over 13 and teens cannot change their birth year in the app until they are 18.
Parental controls are available in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. They will also be available in other countries from this fall.
