Snapchat has announced that it is enhancing its Family Center, which is a set of parental controls, to include improved location sharing features. This update was shared by the company on Thursday.
For a while now, Snapchat users have been able to share their location with friends, but this new feature makes it easier for parents to keep track of where their teens are. Instead of having to search for their child’s location on the Snap Map or check their profile, parents will now receive alerts directly in the Family Center whenever their teen arrives at or leaves specific places, such as school. This means that parents can stay informed about their child’s movements without having to do much searching.
When parents first set up this feature, they will need to send a request to their teen asking them to share their live location. They can then choose up to three locations to receive notifications about. For instance, parents could be notified when their child leaves school, arrives at a piano lesson, and then heads home afterward.
With this update, Snapchat seems to be positioning itself as a competitor to Life360, a well-known app that helps families keep track of each other’s locations and sends updates when family members arrive at or leave certain places.
In a blog post, Snapchat explained, “We’re adding travel notifications to Family Center to give parents more peace of mind knowing their teen has arrived at class, left sports practice on time, or even returned home after a night with friends.”
In addition to these location alerts, parents will soon also be able to see who their teen is sharing their location with on Snapchat. The app will also encourage users who share their location with all their friends to review and manage who can see their location.
Snapchat reports that over 350 million people use the Snap Map feature every month, and these new tools are designed to help families stay connected even when they’re apart.
These features are being rolled out in the coming weeks. Snapchat first introduced the Family Center in 2022 to give parents more insight into how their teens are using the app. This move was partly in response to growing concerns from lawmakers about the safety of young people on social media platforms.
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Since launching Family Center, Snapchat has periodically added new features to help parents monitor and protect their teens. However, many parents might not even be aware that these tools exist. Earlier this year, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel mentioned that while about 20 million teenagers in the United States use Snapchat, only around 200,000 parents are actively using the Family Center to supervise their children’s activities on the app.
