Snapchat is rolling out new parental settings that will let parents ban their teenagers from chatting with the AI chatbot on the app.
“Snapchat was built to help people communicate with their friends in the same way they would offline, and Family Center reflects the dynamics of real-world relationships between parents and teens, where parents have insight into who their teens are spending time with, while still respecting the privacy of their personal communications,” Snapchat wrote in a blog post.
“We worked closely with families and online safety experts to develop Family Center and use their feedback to update it with additional features on a regular basis.”
Along with these updates, parents will now have better access to Family Center—the app’s designated location for parental controls—and be able to monitor the privacy settings of their teenagers.
The addition of the new parental control comes after Snapchat introduced My AI about a year ago and came under fire for not including proper age-gating measures when it was discovered that the chatbot was conversing with children about x-rated content.
The addition of further parental restrictions to the app comes as Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel, along with representatives from X (previously Twitter), TikTok, Meta, and Discord, is set to appear before the Senate on January 31 over kid safety.
