Snapchat is bringing enhanced location sharing to Household Heart, its parental controls hub, the corporate introduced Thursday.
Customers have been capable of share their location with others on Snapchat for fairly a while now, however the brand new addition permits dad and mom to get an alert from throughout the app’s Household Heart when their teen departs from or arrives at designated places, for instance from faculty. Earlier than, dad and mom needed to discover their teen on Snap Map or go to their profile to see the place they have been; this new functionality makes it simpler for fogeys to maintain monitor as they will see their baby’s location immediately inside Household Heart.
The primary time dad and mom set this up, they ship a request asking their teen to share their reside location; notifications may be set for as much as three places on the Snap Map. So dad and mom may get alerted when their child leaves faculty, arrives at his piano lesson, after which leaves to go house.
With this new characteristic, Snapchat could also be seeking to tackle Life360, which is a well-liked service that enables households to trace one another’s whereabouts and obtain updates when relations arrive at or depart particular places.
“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 weblog submit.
Dad and mom may even quickly be capable to see who their teen shares their location with on Snapchat. As well as, Snapchat goes to begin nudging customers who’re selecting to share their location with all of their mates on the app to evaluate who they’re sharing their location with.
Snapchat says greater than 350 million individuals use Snap Map each month, and that these new options will permit households to remain linked after they’re exterior.
The brand new options introduced on Thursday are rolling out over the approaching weeks.
Snapchat first launched Household Heart in 2022 to permit dad and mom to achieve insights into how their teenagers are utilizing the social networking app. The corporate rolled out the hub in response to elevated stress from lawmakers who need social media apps to raised defend younger customers on their providers.
Since rolling out the hub, Snapchat has up to date it with extra options every so often to assist dad and mom defend their teenagers. Nonetheless, dad and mom could not even know that instruments even exist. Earlier this 12 months, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel revealed that 20 million youngsters use Snapchat in the US and that solely round 200,000 dad and mom use its Household Heart supervision controls.
