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 around 200,000 parents use Snapchat controls. supervision of the Family Center. He also shared that approximately 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 real-world metrics on the use of Snapchat's parental controls.
Snapchat Family Center, which allows parents to see who their teens are friends with on the app and who they've been communicating with, was first launched in 2022.
Spiegel shared the numbers after Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) asked the CEOs of Snap, Meta, TikTok, services.
“Us create to flag for Family Center in he from the user profiles,” Spiegel said after being asked what Snapchat was doing to ensure parents and guardians are aware of the tools. “So he accounts us believe maybe he age that they can be parents can see he entrance spot in Family Center easily.”
Snap introduced parental controls in response to increased pressure on social media to better protect minor users from harm. Snapchat's launch of 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 figures in response to Senator Padilla's question.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he could not provide specific figures, but said the company runs “extensive advertising campaigns” both on and off its platform to raise awareness of its parental monitoring tools.
Linda Yaccarino, CEO of
“Be to 14 month old company us have reprioritized child protection and security measures,” Yaccarino said. “W.my have fair started to talk about and discuss as us can improve those with parental control S.”
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said he couldn't share specific details, but that TikTok was “one of the first platforms” to provide parental controls. Jason Citron, CEO of Discord, said Discord raises awareness of its parental controls through promotional videos and in-app prompts.