Snapchat gives parents new insight into how much screen time teens and their friends spend together

Two days after settle the lawsuit accusing Snapchat of causing social media addiction and mental health problems, Snap has announced that it is introducing new parental controls. Parents and guardians can now use Snapchat’s “Family Center” tool to see how much time their youngsters are spending on the platform, as well as additional details about new friends they’ve added.

With these new features, Snap may want to appease regulators and parents concerned about security and screen time on the platform.

Parents can now see the average amount of time their teen spent on Snapchat each day over the previous week. They can see how this time is broken down in different parts of the app, including chatting, snapping, creating with the camera, using Snap Map, or watching content in Spotlight and Stories.

While Family Center has allowed parents to see a complete list of their teen’s friends on Snapchat, now they can see how well their teen knows new users they’ve added as friends. For example, parents will be able to see if they have mutual friends, are saved as contacts, or are members of a shared community.

“This signal of trust makes it easier for parents to understand new connections and have greater confidence that teens are talking to people they know in real life,” Snap wrote in a blog post. “When a parent or guardian sees a new friend they don’t know, they have the information they need to start a productive conversation.”

Snap launched Family Center in 2022 – a parental monitoring tool – in response to regulatory pressure over the social media company’s failure to protect minors on its apps. Since then, Snap has beefed up the tool with additional features, including the ability to see who teens have recently interacted with, set time limits, and block access to the My app’s AI chatbot.

The new feature arrived as a Snap earlier this week comply with the lawsuit filed by a 19-year-old identified in court documents as KGM, who accused the company and other social media giants of designing algorithms and features that are addictive and harm the mental health of users.

The lawsuit also names other platforms, including Meta, YouTube, and TikTok, but no settlement has been reached with those companies. The remaining cases against Meta, TikTok, and YouTube are set to proceed to jury selection at a later date.

Snap is yet another defendant in another social media addiction case. according to documents disclosed in a series of cases, Snap employees have raised concerns about the mental health risks of teenagers for the past nine years. The company said the example was “cherry-picked” and out of context.