After debuting them in the US nearly a month ago, Snapchat has introduced — albeit in a limited capacity — some of its parental controls in India. These set of controls will now help guardians and parents keep track on their child’s usage, as well as deliver some other key insights.
Clubbed under the ‘Family Centre’ in-app tool, this lets parents and guardians review who their teens are friends with on the social app and who they have messaged in the last seven days. The feature however, does not allow guardians or parents to see the exact content of those messages. Still, potential abuse can be reported to Snap’s Trust and Safety team.
To start using this feature, parents need to install Snapchat app on their phones and link their accounts to the children whom they want to monitor. Once the accounts are linked, the tool can be accessed with all its controls either from the Snapchat app’s Profile Settings or by searching for “family” or “family centre” from the app’s Search functionality.
Considering that India now counts for nearly 109 million users alone, it is an understatement that world’s 2nd largest internet market is an important region for Snap. Still, several issues, not specific to India but globally, remain unresolved when it comes to Snapchat.
As an example, there is a rising global concern on how Snapchat’s ephemeral messaging lets users (who are mostly teens) become victims of sexting and other forms of inappropriate online behaviour. Online bullying has also been rising as a major concern. While certain features, such as having mutual friends before chatting is allowed, have curtailed these abuses to an extent, Snapchat still needs to find answers to fully resolve these.
