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UAE and Snapchat Launch New Family Centre Feature

  • Publish date: Wednesday، 14 September 2022
UAE and Snapchat Launch New Family Centre Feature

A cooperation between the Ministry of Possibilities in the UAE and Snap Inc. launched the "Family Centre," a new parental control feature within Snapchat to ensure that the Internet is safe and secure, and provide a safe environment especially for children.

This additional feature allows parents and guardians to have control over their children's activities on the Internet, so they can view the list of their children's friends on the app, and the people they communicate with, but without viewing the content of the conversations, in order to protect privacy.

This feature also allows parents to easily and confidentially report any abusive or suspicious accounts directly by communicating with Snap's Trust and Safety Team, a dedicated unit that works around the clock to protect Snapchat users. Snap has also launched new tools to encourage open and constructive conversations online.

Snap has already reached out to families to identify the needs of parents and their children to sound out their views on parenting standards and privacy, which vary from person to person. The company also consulted with online safety and security experts to consider their opinions to help develop the new Family Centre feature.

Snapchat, by default, children must be mutual friends before they can start communicating with each other. Secondly, friend lists are private, and children cannot have public profiles. Other protections make it harder for strangers to find children. For example, children and youth only show up as a "suggested friend" or in search results in limited instances, like if they have mutual friends in common.