During today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on children’s online safety, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel shared that 20 million teens use Snapchat in the United States and that approximately 200,000 parents use Family Center’s supervision controls. . He also shared that about 400,000 teen accounts have been linked to a parent’s account through Family Center. Spiegel’s testimony marks the first time Snap has shared actual metrics about the use of Snapchat’s parental controls.
Snapchat’s Family Center, which lets parents see who their teens are friends with on the app and who they’re communicating with, first launched in 2022.
Spiegel shared the numbers after Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif) asked the CEOs of Snap, Meta, TikTok, X and Discord to reveal how many minors were using their platforms and how many parents were using the parental controls offered by the companies. services.
“We create one banner For Family Centre on The of the user profile,” Spiegel said after being asked what Snapchat has done to ensure parents and guardians are aware of the tools. “So The accounts we believe it can The age that these can is parents can I see The entrance point in Family Centre easily.”
Snap introduced parental controls in response to increased pressure on the social network to better protect underage users from harm. The launch of Snapchat’s Family Center followed the launch of similar parental control features on other apps, including Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
Spiegel was the only CEO to share numbers in response to Sen. Padilla’s question.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was unable to provide specific numbers, but said the company is running “extensive advertising campaigns” both on and off its platform to raise awareness of its parental control tools. her.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino shared that less than 1% of the platform’s 90 million US users are between the ages of 13 and 17, and that the company is discussing parental controls.
“Being one 14-month-old Company we I have reprioritization child PROTECTION and security meters,” Yaccarino said. “Wm I have just began to talk about and discuss how we can strengthen those with parental controls.”
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said he was unable to share details, but that TikTok was “one of the first platforms” to give parents supervisory controls. Discord CEO Jason Citron said Discord is raising awareness of its parental controls through promotional videos and in-app messages.
