Parents
Parent's Guide to Making SnapChat Safe for Teens
Monitor messages your teen is getting on SnapChat and set up effective parental controls.
Snapchat is a popular messaging app that teens use to send disappearing messages to each other or discover short videos shared by other Snapchat users. As a proactive parent, you should know how to ensure your teen is using this app in a safe way because there are quite a few risks. We'll show you exactly how to monitor Snapchat and restrict harmful features to ensure your child can use SnapChat more safely.
Snapchat has also come under fire for being a risky app for teens. We recommend looking up related news stories to see some of the clear risks posed by the platform. However, there are some ways to mitigate these risks by following our recommendations.
Monitor disappearing messages (snaps)
The most important feature parents should know about on Snapchat is that Snaps (and Chats) disappear after being viewed. For example, by default, viewing a message means that it will be removed soon.
Even worse: Snapchat doesn't give you the parental control tools needed to deal with this risk - you'll need to use a screen monitoring tool.
If your teen uses an iPhone or iPad, you can use a monitoring app like LivingRoom for Families to make Snapchat safer.
Strangers attempting to secretly chat with your teen will see that the chat is being recorded. You'll also be able to review Snapchat private messages, even if messages are deleted or set to disappear automatically.
See who is contacting your teen
You can set up Snapchat's Family Center to get some visibility into your teen's contact list.
However, Snapchat users can make their own username handle and not use their first and last name or even show a picture of themselves.
Even if you have access to your teen's Snapchat contact list, it may not be obvious if there's a contact that you should be concerned about.
This is why we recommend combining a screen monitoring app like LivingRoom for families with Snapchat's Family Center since it fills in these monitoring gaps. By pairing screenshots of Snapchat messages with contacts, you can remove some of anonymity and catch risky behavior.
Filter out inappropriate stories
Snapchat is similar to TikTok in that there's a public video feed where your teen can discover content from other users, who may not be teens within their friend group. It's possible that your teen intentionally or accidentally discovers inappropriate content.
When your teen is added to Snapchat's family center, you'll have some peace of mind that some of the inappropriate content is automatically filtered out of the stories and spotlight feeds.
However, Snapchat's filter isn't perfect and it tends to only work with content that is obviously explicit. But parents will often see content that they consider to be inappropriate that Snapchat doesn't filter out.
This is where a screen monitoring app like LivingRoom for Families is useful in combination with Family Center. In fact, you might find that Family Center isn't needed after adding in screen monitoring.
As your teen uses Snapchat, they will see a clear recording indicator to remind them to browse responsibly.
You'll be able to pick up on any problematic behavior.
Handling the AI chat companion
The risks of AI chatbots on teen health and safety have been getting more mainstream attention .
Fortunately, you can disable the AI chatbot using Snapchat's Family Center so that this feature isn't available to your teen.
You can also use an iPhone/iPad screen monitor like LivingRoom for Families to catch problematic behavior with the AI chatbot:
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a teen opt out of Family Center?
Snapchat's parental control system is designed to be voluntary for both the Teen and the parent, so a lot of the features offered here are ultimately opt-in for your Teen. You may need to consider third-party monitoring apps like LivingRoom for Families as a more in-depth alternative that your teen can't bypass.
Does SnapChat's explicit content filter work for private chats?
Snapchat's built-in explicit content filter applies to the public video discovery feed to hide obvious explicit videos and images.
However, Snapchat has made it clear that private messages are not moderated or scanned for explicit content, so it's unlikely that explicit content will be filtered out if it is sent directly to your teen. This means that a user could add a teen as a friend and potentially send inappropriate content without the explicit content filter.
Furthermore, there's plenty of content on Snapchat that wouldn't be classified as overtly explicit, but you might not be comfortable with your teen seeing.
Can Family Center show who is contacting my teen?
You can use Snapchat's Family Center to see your teen's contact list, but this isn't very meaningful since contacts can uses aliases. They might not have their real photo or name in use. To truly understand who is on your teen's contact list, you'd need to see the chats associated with the contact. Unfortunately, Snapchat does not let you monitor private chats. You'll have to use a screen monitoring tool like LivingRoom for Families to monitor disappearing snaps.
Can Family Center be used to see my teen's private messages?
No - you'll have to use a screen monitoring tool like LivingRoom for Families to monitor private messages since Family Center does not provide this level of monitoring.
How to see how much time your teen spends on Snapchat
If your teen is using an iPhone, use Apple Family and Screen Time to monitor time spent on the Snapchat app. If you've already set this up for your Teen, then go to Settings > Family > [your Teen's name] > Screen Time to view app usage on your own iPhone.
If your child is using an Android smartphone, use Google Family Link to view app screen time for the Snapchat app. If you've already set up parental controls on an Android smartphone for your Teen, open the Family Link app on your device and choose your Teen's name to view how much they've spent using Snapchat.