Snapchat will add family safety tools to its app in order to protect minors

New Delhi:  Snapchat said it is planning to launch its own set of “family engagement” tools in the coming months in order to make its platform safer for minors. During an interview at the WSJ Tech Live conference this week, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel teased the upcoming offering, explaining that the new product will essentially function as a family centre, giving parents better visibility into how teens are using its service and providing privacy controls.

According to TechCrunch, Spiegel stressed Snapchat`s more private nature as a tool for communicating with friends, noting that Snapchat user profiles were already private by default — something that differentiated it from some social media rivals until recently.

“I think the entire way this service is constructed really promotes a safe experience regardless of what age you are, but we never market our service to people under the age of 13,” he said, then added Snap is now working on new features that would allow parents to feel more comfortable with the app.

“We haven`t announced the name of this product yet, but we basically have a family center so that young people and their parents can use Snapchat together,” Spiegel said.

This product would give parents more visibility into who their teenage users may be talking to on Snapchat and their privacy settings, among other things.

When parents who lost their son to a drug overdose advocated for Snapchat to work with third-party parental control software applications in June, the company revealed that this type of work was on its roadmap.

It stated at the time that it was cautious about sharing private user data with third parties and that it was considering developing its own parental controls as a solution.

A Snapchat spokesperson confirmed the new family engagement tools will combine both an educational component as well as tools meant to be used by parents.