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Snapchat has expanded its Family Centre platform with new tools aimed at giving parents and carers greater visibility into how teenagers use the app.
The update builds on Family Centre, first introduced in 2022, which was designed to provide families with practical safeguards and visibility into teen activity, while keeping private conversations private.
The latest changes focus on screen time insights, clearer context around new friend connections and refreshed educational resources for parents.
Insights Into Daily Snapchat Usage
Parents using Family Centre can now see the average amount of time their teen spends on Snapchat each day across the previous week.
The new dashboard includes a breakdown of how that time is distributed across different features. This covers messaging with friends, creating content using the Camera, browsing Snap Map and watching Spotlight and Stories.
Snap said the goal is to help families better understand how teens are engaging with the platform and to support more informed conversations about digital habits.
“These insights are designed to give parents a clearer understanding of how their teens are spending time on Snapchat,” the company said.
Rather than offering access to message content, the feature provides high-level activity data intended to prompt discussion around screen time and online behaviour.
More Context Around New Friend Connections
Family Centre already allows parents to see a complete list of their teen’s friends, as well as any new friends added in the past week.
With the update, parents can now access more context when a new friend is added.
This includes whether the new contact shares mutual friends, whether they are saved in the teen’s phone contacts and which shared communities they may have in common.
Snap said this additional information is intended to help parents better understand how their teen may know a new connection.
“This added context helps families feel more informed about new connections and supports constructive conversations where needed,” the company said.
If a parent does not recognise a name, the shared data may provide useful background before raising concerns.
Updated Safety And Educational Resources
Alongside the new activity insights and connection details, Snapchat has released an updated explainer video for parents and carers.
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The video provides step-by-step guidance on setting up and using Family Centre, with a focus on navigating its controls and understanding available options.
Family Centre has been structured to reflect what Snap describes as real-world family dynamics. Parents gain visibility into key account information and can adjust selected safety settings, but they cannot read the content of private messages.
Beyond the features announced this week, Family Centre enables parents to:
- View their teen’s friends list and recent contacts
- Set content controls
- Disable access to My AI and, in a future update, the AI-powered search engine Perplexity
- Share location within the family
- Report accounts they believe may be concerning on their teen’s behalf
Snap said these tools are designed to balance teen privacy with parental oversight.
The company has continued to position Family Centre as a way to encourage ongoing dialogue between teens and parents, rather than as a monitoring tool.
More information about Family Centre and setup guidance is available at https://parents.snapchat.com.
Last Updated on January 28, 2026 by Nick Ross
