Snapchat Adds Location Alerts for Parents to Family Center

Snapchat is stepping up its parental control game. company announced A new feature for Family Center on Thursday that lets parents be notified when their teens arrive at or leave certain places. This update is part of Snapchat’s ongoing efforts to make its platform safer for young users while keeping parents informed.

Before this, parents could only check their teenager’s location manually via Snap Map or by visiting their profile. The new feature simplifies this process by sending push notifications directly to Family Center when a teen arrives at or leaves a designated spot, such as school, practice, or home. Parents can set notifications for up to three locations after their teen chooses to share their live location.

Snapchat is positioning the feature as a way to help families stay connected. “We’re adding travel notifications to Family Center to give parents added peace of mind knowing their teen is arriving to class, getting out of gym practice on time, or even returning home after a night out with friends,” Snapchat said in a blog post.

The move also puts Snapchat in direct competition with apps like Life360, which offer similar location-sharing features for families.

Snap is adding a few other privacy tools as well. Parents will soon be able to see who their teens are sharing locations with, and Snapchat will begin encouraging users who share their locations with all their friends to review those settings. These changes are part of the company’s broader efforts to help users gain better control over their privacy.

Snapchat says more than 350 million people use Snap Map every month and has made location sharing a central part of the app. Despite this, the Family Center has not been widely adopted. Launched in 2022, the hub allows parents to monitor how teens use the app, but according to Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, it’s only approximately 200,000 parents The number of people using these tools in the US is compared to the 20 million teens on the platform.

New location alerts, among other updates, will be available in the coming weeks. Whether these will be enough to increase adoption of Family Center remains to be seen.

Featured Image courtesy of Snapchat

Follow us for more technology news updates.