Almost all popular media networks offer parental controls, but many parents are not aware of them. Less than 10% of teens are on Instagram Apple had enabled parental controls by the end of 2022, and only a small percentage of parents were using the controls, according to a Washington Post report earlier this year.
In response to congressional concerns, Rights groups When it comes to the potential harm that social media use can cause to young users, tech companies have long claimed that their parental controls protect children. But because parental controls aren’t enabled by default, they don’t do much to protect users unless parents actually enable them.
Each platform approaches parental controls a little differently, but most start by letting parents monitor who their teens are communicating with. Some social media platforms go a little further by letting parents intervene in how their teens use the app.
TikTok appears to be the platform that gives parents the most control over their teens’ usage. The ByteDance-owned company has faced significant scrutiny from lawmakers, More can be said. Of all the other platforms on this list, and in an attempt to win over lawmakers, the app offers more advanced parental controls than Instagram, Snapchat, and others.
While most social media platforms offer some form of parental controls, some have been around longer than others. Meta has faced scrutiny for its potential negative impact on teens and younger users. More than a decadeThis is why it has had parental controls for many years, while a platform like Discord has been able to fly under the radar and only recently introduced parental controls.
Before getting into the details of controls, it’s important to realize that teens can also create secret accounts, and that most parental controls on social media rely on communication between parents and their teen.
We’ve created this guide to make it easier for parents to navigate and understand the parental controls offered by popular social media companies, and we’ve detailed how they differ from platform to platform.
How Instagram Parental Controls Work
Meta-owned Instagram offers parental controls through Family Center The social network offers users the option to create a “supervised account” for teens ages 13 to 17. The teen and a parent must consent to participate.
In Family Center, parents and guardians can monitor their teen’s account by seeing how much time they spend on the social network. Parents can intervene in their teen’s app usage by setting daily time limits or adding scheduled breaks. With this feature, parents can ensure that their teen only spends a certain amount of time on the app and is not using it during homework or study time.
They can also see their teen’s follower and following lists to monitor who can see their posts and send them messages. Parents can also see any reports their teen has sent to Instagram.
Additionally, parents can see their teen’s account privacy settings, sensitive content settings, and direct message settings. They can discuss these settings with their teen to help ensure their teen is protected.
TikTok offers strong parental controls.
Like Instagram, TikTok allows parents to link their accounts to their teens’ accounts through “family mating” After doing this, parents can set the amount of time their teen can spend on the app each day. They can set a screen time limit for their teen and get a summary of how much time their teen spends on the app.
The app also lets parents mute their teens’ push notifications (TikTok mutes notifications for teens ages 13-15 from 9 p.m. to 8 a.m. by default). Parents can also choose to pause their teens’ notifications for a custom amount of time.
TikTok lets parents take an extra step that other platforms on this list don’t: Parents can restrict certain types of content. They have the option to select keywords or hashtags to exclude certain content from their teen’s For You and Following feeds. They can also enable “Restricted Mode,” which will automatically limit their teen’s exposure to inappropriate or offensive content.
Additionally, parents can decide whether their teen can search for videos, hashtags, or live videos. Additionally, they can control whether their teen’s account can be recommended to others on the app. Parents can decide who can comment on their teen’s videos and who can view content they like.
When it comes to direct messages, parents can control who can message their teens or turn off direct messages altogether. It’s worth noting that direct messages on TikTok are only available to accounts belonging to users who are 16 years of age or older.
How to Set Parental Controls on Snapchat
Snapchat offers parents access to: “Family Center” This allows them to monitor some of their teens’ activities on the app. Parents need to create their own Snapchat accounts and then link them to their teens’ accounts.
Once parents link the accounts, they can see who their child has friended on Snapchat. They can also see who they’ve messaged in the past seven days. Additionally, parents can see a full list of members in groups their teen has been active in over the past week.
It is worth noting that parents cannot see the messages that their teens have shared; they can only see a list of people their teens have recently messaged.
As with TikTok, parents can restrict their teens’ ability to view sensitive content in Stories and Spotlight.
If parents find an account that concerns them, they can report it to Snapchat’s Trust and Safety team. However, unlike TikTok and Instagram, parents cannot monitor or limit the amount of time their children spend on the app.
How to Set Up Parental Controls in Discord
Discord offers “Family Center” This app allows parents to monitor their children’s activity on the platform. After signing up for Family Center, parents receive a weekly email summary with information about their teen’s activity. While parents will be able to see the Discord communities and users their teen is talking to, they won’t be able to see the contents of the conversations themselves.
Parents can see the friends their teen has recently added, including their display names and avatars. They can also see the users their teen has sent direct or group messages to or called, including the times of the last message or call.
Additionally, parents can see which servers their teen has joined or participated in, including server icons and the number of server members.
Although Discord is regularly used by young audiences, the platform has until recently been largely out of the conversation about social media and its potential to harm children. In the past, Discord has been able to sit on the sidelines while Congress has examined Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and Facebook. However, Discord was asked to testify at the most recent congressional hearing on child exploitation.
How to Use Facebook Parental Controls
You might be surprised to see Facebook on this list because it’s largely known as a social network for older people. However, while it may seem like teens don’t use Facebook, Latest reports I suggest that Young They still use the Meta proprietary platform.
Parents can access Facebook’s monitoring tools in the same place they monitor their kids’ activity on Instagram. They can see how much time their teens have spent on Facebook each day over the past week, as well as their average daily time spent over the course of the week. To control how much time their teens spend on the app, parents can set scheduled breaks.
Additionally, parents can see their teen’s Facebook friends, as well as their privacy settings and content preferences. They can also see the people and pages their teen has blocked.
Parental Controls in X
X, formerly known as Twitter, is the only social media platform on this list that doesn’t offer any parental controls. While Twitter bans users under the age of 13 from using the platform, many of them lie about their age to join the platform.
Compared to other social media platforms, X is drowning in adult-oriented content. The company has also loosened its hate speech filters since its acquisition by Elon Musk and has become significantly more lenient on cyberbullying and hateful content than the other platforms on this list.
While the majority of teens don’t use X, a 2023 Pew Research Center study found that 23% of teens used social networkingwhich is still a large number, especially on a platform that does nothing to protect them.
X, like Discord, has managed to avoid attention when it comes to congressional concerns about protecting children online. However, the company was part of a congressional hearing on child exploitation earlier this year.