Agencies-Gaza post
Snapchat launches first parental control
The launch of the Snapchat feature “Parental Control” on content that reaches teenagers raised questions among many social media experts about the secret behind the launch of the app for its first parental control tools.
The new feature, “family center”, or “Family Center”, allows parents to know their teenage children’s friends on the app, as well as those who exchanged messages with them for over a week, but do not allow them to access the content of those conversations, in order to give parents better insights to help protect their children in ways that do not compromise their adolescent privacy.
The new feature is activated once parents invite their children to the new family center within the application, and the recipient has the option to accept or reject the invitation.
As for the secret behind the launch of Snapchat as its first parental control tool, social media expert Mohammed Adel said that it came “down on sharp criticism of Snapchat, which reached cases brought to the company, alleging that adolescents on the platform were exposed to content detrimental to their mental health to the point of the suicide of some users.”
Adel noted that “increased criticism of the company affects its reputation and therefore, over time, it loses more users, affecting the volume of investments, and thus the profits that the company targets, as well as the direct impact that causes Snapchat to pay huge compensation in the event that it loses those issues.”
SNAP planned to launch new parental control features in the coming months, including notifications to parents when teens report abuse from a user, Reuters reports.
But those features “will not affect the mental and mental health of adolescents much,” believes social media expert Adel, who believes they came to “save the face of the social media app, nothing more or less.”
Adel said that application is highly targeted at young people, while older people are not very good at dealing with it, and therefore parental control tools need to be preceded by awareness-raising materials for adults on how to deal and interact with it.
