Popular social media app Snapchat is coming with a new update that will allow families to follow their children. It’s set to introduce a new parental control feature called “Family Hub” that will allow parents to see who their teens have been friends with on the app, who they’ve texted in the past seven days, and more. According to new screenshots of shared Snapchat’s upcoming Family Center, the new Family Center feature will allow parents to see who their teens are friends with on the app.

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Snapchat comes with ‘Family Center’ app that allows parental control

With the new control center, which is expected to be more useful for parents, families will even be able to view their friend lists. They will also be able to see who their teen has been chatting with in the past seven days, but will not be able to see the content of those conversations. The resulting screenshots also explain how parents can help their teens report abuse and harassment when needed.

The parental control feature works by allowing parents to invite their teen (or teen) to the new in-app Family Center to start monitoring. The recipient of this invitation has the option to accept or decline the invitation. Therefore, whether or not to be under control is in a way the choice of young people.

For Snapchat, which claims to respect teens’ privacy, it’s a viable approach to parental controls involving teens. Rather than allowing parents to spy on their teens, we could say that it allows the parent and child to have a conversation about parental monitoring where they agree to a set of rules appropriate for their own home.

Introducing a similar control system, TikTok allows parents to pair their TikTok account with a child’s to control whether minors can use search and, if so, who can view, comment, or control the privacy of the account.

Likewise, it is tightening parental controls on Youtube and Instagram day by day. So what do you think about these controls? Are these controls sufficient for you? We welcome your thoughts in the comments section.