Snapchat Expands Parental Controls with "My AI" Chatbot Restrictions
Snapchat enhances its Family Center offering parents greater control over their teen's app usage, including the ability to disable the My AI chatbot.
Morgan Riley
- 2024-01-11
- Updated 05:13 PM ET
(NewsNibs) - Snapchat has introduced new features to its parental oversight tool, Family Center, which now includes the option for parents to block their teenage children from accessing the "My AI" chatbot. Recognizing the potential need for such controls, Snapchat ensures that if disabled by parents, teens will receive a message stating that My AI has been turned off, when they attempt to contact the bot. This development follows the chatbot's introduction to the platform in April and embraces protections to prevent inappropriate or harmful interactions, coupled with time restrictions on usage to address concerns over digital wellbeing.
Enhanced Parental Supervision Abilities
Family Center, tailored for supervising users between the ages of 13 and 17, now permits parents to monitor their teens' safety and privacy settings more comprehensively. This includes oversight on Stories sharing, managing contact permissions, and monitoring location sharing through Snap Map. Additionally, a "strike system" has been implemented by Snapchat to discipline accounts promoting content deemed unsuitable for teen users. These reinforcements to the Family Center seek to emulate real-world dynamics between parents and teens, offering visibility while maintaining respect for the teen's privacy.
The upgraded Family Center features are readily accessible within the app's settings near the bitmoji icon, or by searching terms such as "safety," "family," or "parent." Moreover, amid growing scrutiny regarding the mental health impacts and potential addiction associated with social media usage among teens, a federal judge has recently mandated that companies including Snap, Google, Meta, and TikTok face a lawsuit. In the wake of this, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel is set to testify at a Senate subcommittee hearing later this month alongside executives from other tech giants to discuss youth safety in the digital realm.
Snapchat's latest move to augment their safety features reflects an ongoing industry-wide conversation about the role of technology in protecting young users. As social media companies navigate the fine line between innovation and responsibility, such enhancements to platforms like Snapchat's Family Center could pave the way for more balanced digital environments catered to youth safety and wellness.
