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Snapchat announced Thursday that it is bringing an improved location sharing feature to Family Center, its parental control center.
Users have been able to share their location with others on Snapchat for some time now, but the new addition allows parents to get an alert from within the app’s Family Center when their teen leaves or arrives at certain locations, for example from school. Previously, parents had to find their teens on Snap Map or go to their profile to see where they were; This new capability makes it easier for parents to keep track of location 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 can be alerted when their child leaves school, arrives for piano lesson, and then leaves to go home.
With this new feature, Snapchat may be looking to take on Life360, a popular service that allows families to track each other’s whereabouts and receive updates when family members arrive or leave specific locations.
“We’re adding travel notifications to Family Center to give parents more peace of mind when they know their teen has arrived to class, left exercise on time, or even returned home after a night out 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. Additionally, Snapchat will begin urging users who choose to share their location with all of their friends on the app to review the people they share their location with.
Snapchat says more than 350 million people use Snap Map each month, and that these new features will allow families to stay connected when they’re abroad.
The new features announced Thursday will be rolled out over the coming weeks.
Snapchat Family Center first launched in 2022 to allow parents to get insights into how their teens use the social networking app. The company launched the center in response to mounting pressure from lawmakers who want social media apps to better protect young users on their services.
Since launching 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 these tools exist. Earlier this year, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel revealed that 20 million teens use Snapchat in the US and only about 200,000 parents use Family Center moderation controls.
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