Parent’s Guide: 

Snapchat’s Family Center

A Parent’s Guide to Snapchat
As a parent or caregiver, you might know of Snapchat as an app that teens use
to communicate with their friends. You also might know it looks a bit different
than other traditional social media platforms—and that’s deliberate—but we
recognize it can make our app more difficult to figure out if you haven’t used it
yourself. This guide is meant to give you the basics on how Snapchat works, key
protections that can help your teens use it safely, and a walkthrough of our newparental tool, Family Center. 

To start, Snapchat was intentionally built differently than traditional social media
platforms, with a focus on nurturing and supporting real friendships in a healthy,safe, and fun environment. Snapchat opens directly to a camera, not an endlessfeed of content, and is focused on connecting people who are already friends inreal life. We have always wanted Snapchatters to be able to genuinely express
themselves and have fun with their friends in the same way they would if they
were hanging out in person—without the pressure to grow a following, gain
views, or earn likes. We believe technology should reflect real-life humanbehaviors, and how people act and relate to each other in their everyday lives. 

This goal drives the decisions we make about how to structure and operate
Snapchat and develop new products. We use product development processes
that consider the safety, privacy, and ethical implications of a new feature at thefront end of designing new features—and we don’t launch products that don’t
pass these intensive reviews.

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How Snapchat Works: A Quick 101
Snapchat contains five tabs where Snapchatters can express themselves, live inthe moment, learn about the world, and have fun together. 

Our Camera: When you open Snapchat,  
the first thing you see is a camera, which  is meant to be like a blank canvas thatencourages people to express themselvesauthentically without worrying about what
they see other people posting. Snapchat
doesn’t offer browsable public profiles forteens or traditional public comments onfriends’ content—it’s one of the ways weintentionally make it harder for strangers  to find people on our app.

Chat: To the left of the Camera is our Chatscreen, where Snapchatters can talk to theirfriends using text or pictures (“Snaps”). 

Snap Map: Further to the left of the Chatscreen is our Snap Map, a personalized 
map that can be used to explore places 
and events happening near you, and see
what your friends are up to if they choose  to share their location with you. By default,
location-sharing is off for all Snapchatters.
They have the option to decide to share iton the Map with friends—but never  with strangers.

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Discover: To the right of the Camera is ourcontent platform, which only featurescontent from vetted media publishers andcontent creators. Across our app, we don’t
offer an open newsfeed, where anyone canbroadcast unvetted content—and don’tallow an opportunity for unmoderated
content to ‘go viral.’Spotlight: To the right of Discover isSpotlight, our entertainment platform,
which is proactively moderated using
human review before a piece of content
can reach more than 25 views.

Protections for Snapchatters under 18
While we want Snapchat to be a safe experience for all members of ourcommunity, we have built in additional protections for teenagers in particular: We require teens to mutually accept each other as friends in order tobegin communicating. By default, Snapchatters under 18 must opt-in tobeing friends in order to start chatting with each other—similar to reallife where friendships are mutual.

We ban public profiles for minors and friend lists are private.  
We intentionally make it harder for strangers to find minors by banningpublic profiles for people under 18, and for all Snapchatters, friend lists
are private.

We limit discoverability for teens to people they likely know. Teens only
show up as a "suggested friend" or in search results in limited instances,like if they have mutual friends in common.

We have safeguards against trying to circumvent our protections forminors. We prevent younger Snapchatters with existing accounts fromupdating their birthday to an age of 18 or above. We also use age-gating
tools to prevent minors from viewing age-regulated content and ads.

4 | Parents Guide: Snapchat’s Family CenterOur Tools for Parents: Family CenterAs our Snapchat community continues to grow, we know parents and caregivers
want additional ways to help keep their teens safe. That’s why we introduced an
in-app tool called Family Center, which helps parents get more insight into whotheir teens are friends with on Snapchat, and who they have been messaging,while still respecting teens’ privacy and autonomy. Similar to the way we havebuilt our other products, Family Center is designed to reflect the way parents
engage with their teens in the real world, where parents usually know who theirteens are friends with and when they are hanging out but don’t eavesdrop on theirprivate conversations.  

At launch, Family Center will give parents over the age of 25 the ability to:
See which Snapchat friends their teens have sent messages, photos, or videos
to in the last seven days, in a way that still protects the teens’ privacy by notrevealing the actual contents of their conversations (Snaps and messages)

See a complete list of their teens’ existing friends. In the coming weeks, we  will add a new feature that will allow parents to easily view new friends theirteens have added, making it easy to start conversations about who their newcontacts are

Easily and confidentially report any accounts parents may be concerned about
directly to our 24/7 Trust and Safety teams to investigate

Access key explainers about how to use these tools; resources for importantconversation starters with their teens; and additional tips for using  Snapchat safely

Teens who have opted in to Family Center will also be able to see what theirparents see, with a mirrored view of features. 

5 | Parents Guide: Snapchat’s Family CenterOur Tools for Parents: Family Center

To help develop our Family Center, we worked with families to understand 
the needs of both parents and teens, knowing that everyone’s approach toparenting and privacy is different. We also consulted with online safety and 
well-being experts to incorporate their feedback and insights. We wanted 
to develop a set of tools designed to reflect the dynamics of real-world
relationships and foster collaboration and trust between parents and teens. 

In the coming months, we plan to add additional features to Family Center, such as new content controls for parents and the ability for teens to notify theirparents when they report an account or piece of content to us. While we closely
moderate and curate both our content and entertainment platforms, we knoweach family has different views on what content is appropriate for their teens
and want to give them the ability to make those personal decisions.  

Getting Started on Family Center

To find out more about Family Center, including how to get started with ourintroductory videos, head to https://snap.com/en-US/safety-and-impact. 

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Additional Tools & Resources for Snapchatters
We provide simple and easy-to-use in-app reporting tools for Snapchatters toalert our Trust and Safety teams for investigation. All reporting is confidential,
it’s important to know that we can preserve content once it is reported to us toinvestigate. In the vast majority of cases, our teams take action on these reports
in under two hours. We also work with law enforcement when they request ourhelp with valid investigations. 

Additionally, we invest in educational programs and initiatives that support thesafety and mental health of our community—like Friend Check Up, Here for You,and Heads Up. Friend Check Up prompts Snapchatters to review their friend list
and make sure they still want to be connected with everyone on it. Here for You
and Heads Up are both in-app tools that proactively send resources toSnapchatters from experts and trusted partners when they search for certain
terms related to a range of mental health and other issues, including stress,
anxiety, depression, drugs, bullying, suicidal thoughts, and much more.

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Parent’s Guide: Snapchat’s Family Center

Last Updated: June 21, 2022