Last year, we introduced Family Center on Snapchat to offer parents a way to gain insight into who their teens are communicating with on Snapchat and in a way that still protects their teens’ privacy. We also shared plans to add additional tools over time to help parents customize their teens’ individual experiences and needs.
Today, we are pleased to roll out our latest feature for Family Center, Content Controls, which allow parents to limit the type of content their teens can watch on Snapchat.
Snapchat was designed to be different from traditional social media platforms, and this extends to the way people consume content. There are two parts of our app where content can potentially reach a large audience:
- Stories is our content platform, where content creators, Snap Stars, and more than 900 media partners, such as NBC News, Axios, ESPN, Le Monde and People, provide trusted news, entertainment, sports and other genres. Stories is not an open platform – and creators and partners must abide by our content editorial guidelines.
- Spotlight is our entertainment platform, where Snapchatters can watch fun and creative content created by members of our community. On Spotlight, any content Snapchatters submit must comply with our Community Guidelines.
We are deliberate about what type of content we allow to be broadcast. Our platform and policies are designed to prevent unvetted content from going viral, and we proactively moderate public-facing content from creators and Snapchatters before it’s eligible to get reach on either Stories or Spotlight.
Our new Content Controls in Family Center will allow parents to filter out Stories from publishers or creators that may have been identified as sensitive or suggestive. To enable Content Controls, parents will need to have an existing Family Center set up with their teen.
Publishing our Content Guidelines for eligibility recommendation
While our Community Guidelines outline the types of content and behaviours that are strictly prohibited across our whole platform, we set an even higher bar for the public content that is suggested to Snapchatters on Stories or Spotlight.
For the first time, we’re publishing our Content Guidelines for members of our community whose content appears on Stories or Spotlight. These guidelines outline:
- Content that is prohibited, consistent with our Community Guidelines;
- Which content is eligible for recommendation on Stories or Spotlight, meaning it would get additional reach;
- Which content is considered sensitive and could be restricted using our new Content Controls.
We have always shared these guidelines with our media partners and Snap Stars. By publishing these full content guidelines for anyone to read, we want to offer greater transparency into the stronger standards we set for public-facing content and into our eligibility requirements for distribution.
We hope these new tools and guidelines help parents, caregivers, trusted adults and teens not only personalize their Snapchat experience, but empower them to have productive conversations about their online experiences. You can find resources to help get these conversations started with your teen on our updated safety site.
Finally, we’re working on adding additional tools to our Family Center around My AI, our experimental chatbot, that would give parents more visibility and control around their teens’ usage of My AI.
— Team Snap, 15 March 2023