Snap Enhances Family Center Parental Controls

Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, announced enhancements to its Family Center parental controls on Thursday, introducing tools to track teen screen time and provide insights into new social connections on the app. The updates come two days after Snap settled a lawsuit accusing the platform of contributing to social media addiction and mental health issues among young users.

The revised Family Center now offers parents and guardians a dashboard displaying the average daily time a teen spends on Snapchat over the previous week. This goes beyond a simple total, breaking down usage across specific features such as chatting, capturing snaps, camera creation, Snap Map exploration, and content consumption on Spotlight and Stories. Snapchat stated that these details aim to foster discussions about healthy digital habits, allowing parents to address specific patterns, like extended time on video content, rather than issuing general restrictions.

In addition, the tool now provides "trust signals" for newly added friends, helping parents gauge how their teen knows the contact. Indicators include whether the new friend is a mutual connection, saved in the teen's phone contacts, or...