Snapchat is bringing enhanced location sharing to Family Center, its parental controls hub, the company announced Thursday.
Users have been able to share their location with others on Snapchat for quite some time now, but the new addition allows parents to get an alert from within the app’s Family Center when their teen departs from or arrives at designated locations, for example from school. Before, parents had to find their teen on Snap Map or go to their profile to see where they were; this new capability makes it easier for parents to keep track as they can see their child’s location directly within Family Center.
The first time parents set this up, they send a request asking their teen to share their live location; notifications can be set for up to three locations on the Snap Map. So parents could get alerted when their kid leaves school, arrives at his piano lesson, and then leaves to go home.
With this new feature, Snapchat may be looking to take on Life360, which is a popular service that allows families to track each other’s whereabouts and receive updates when family members arrive at or leave specific locations.
“We’re adding travel notifications to Family Center to give parents more peace of mind knowing their teen has arrived at class, left sports practice on time, or even returned home after a night with friends,” Snapchat wrote in a blog post.
Parents will also soon be able to see who their teen shares their location with on Snapchat. In addition, Snapchat is going to start nudging users who are choosing to share their location with all of their friends on the app to review who they are sharing their location with.
Snapchat says more than 350 million people use Snap Map every month, and that these new features will allow families to stay connected when they’re outside.
The new features announced on Thursday are rolling out over the coming weeks.
Snapchat first launched Family Center in 2022 to allow parents to gain insights into how their teens are using the social networking app. The company rolled out the hub in response to increased pressure from lawmakers who want social media apps to better protect young users on their services.
Since rolling out the hub, Snapchat has updated it with additional features every now and then to help parents protect their teens. However, parents may not even know that tools even exist. Earlier this year, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel revealed that 20 million teenagers use Snapchat in the United States and that only around 200,000 parents use its Family Center supervision controls.
