Today I’m sharing how to set up parental controls on snapchat. If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve got a teen (or tween) who is desperate to get on the app. Keep reading to find out how safe (or unsafe) the app is, and how to set up parental controls on snapchat yourself.

My daughter started high school this year and all of her new friends have snapchat. I am a big believer in adhering to the minimum age recommendations for social media apps – they are there for a reason, after all. Snapchat, like TikTok insta and the rest have a 13+ age limit. This hasn’t stopped the kids wanting them sooner though. To find out how to set up parental controls on snapchat, and why you need them, keep reading.

Things to Consider Before Giving Your Child Snapchat Access

Syd (a mature 11) has been begging her Dad for snapchat for weeks, so he asked me what I thought. I’ll be completely honest here – I downloaded snapchat about 10 years ago, had a quick play, then promptly deleted it. I didn’t like it at all. The fact that whatever was sent to you, disappeared as soon as you saw it felt like the ultimate red flag. Especially for children.

I re-downloaded the app recently, to see what’s changed, and have a look at the snapchat parental controls. I was pleased to see that messages can now be viewed twice – so at least if someone does send you something inappropriate, you have a second chance to screen grab it.

There is a close friends option on snapchat. So even if you set up parental controls on snapchat on your child’s account, that doesn’t mean you’ll see every snap they share – if you’re not on their close friends list. People can also send snaps via direct message, so again… you can’t see everything your child sends, or any of what they receive.

What do Snapchat Parental Controls Let You Do?

The Snapchat Parental controls allow parents to see all of their child’s friends, and who they have messaged in the past 7 days. You can’t actually read the messages though, and people can call their handle anything they want. From this list of people they have messaged, you can report any accounts you’re worried about to snapchat by tapping the flag beside their name.

It’s also worth knowing that when you set up parental controls on snapchat, you can’t see content your child shares with their close friends, either, so make sure your child adds you to their close friends circle. (When you post a new “snap” to the app, on a private account, you have the choice to make it viewable to all friends, or just your close friends.

While you can restrict sensitive content via snapchat parental controls, this doesn’t prevent people sending things directly, or your child viewing inappropriate content their friends share. You also can’t stop them searching out content you deem inappropriate.

How to Set up Parental Controls on Snapchat

The first thing to note is that to set up parental controls on snapchat, the parent needs to have a profile themselves. So before you give your child permission to set up an account, you need one yourself. (You can choose not to share your account with your phone contacts if you don’t actually want to use the app for anything but monitoring your child(ren).

Before you can set up parental controls on snapchat, you need to add your child to your friends list. (If you’ve approved for your contacts to be imported, you’ll see them on your potential friends list). If not, you can search for their snapchat username in the search bar.

Once they are your friend, you need to go into “Family Centre” on your profile…

1. You find this by tapping your profile icon (top-left of an iPhone screen – shown in the above screenshots).
2. Then tap the settings icon (top-right of an iPhone screen – shown in the above screenshots).
3. Next, you need to scroll down and tap on “Family Centre,” (which is within the privacy control section).
4. From here, you tap “add teen”, and then tap your child’s profile. They’ll then get a request to confirm you’re their parent.

If your child has set their age to 18+ on snapchat, they’ll receive an alert that you’ve invited them, but they won’t be able to accept it unless they change their date of birth to be under 18. This is the main reason people have issues trying to set up parental controls on snapchat – especially with kids who don’t want their parents to be able to monitor their interactions.

Once they approve the request, you’ll see the option to restrict sensitive content. Remember, this will limit your teen’s ability to see sensitive content on Stories and Spotlight. However, it does not limit the content your child might see elsewhere, such as in Chat, Snaps, Search, etc. For me, THIS is why younger children should not have snapchat.

Why is Snapchat not Suitable for Under 13s?

I was disappointed to see that you can’t close off your profile completely though. I got a friend to search for Syd’s handle to see if she showed up on the search bar, and she does. So anyone could send her a friend request. (At least on Facebook you can choose to be completely hidden and prevent people sending you requests).

Other important things to note about Snapchat are: You can have multiple accounts, so even if you add parental controls to your child’s account. it’s still worth checking your child’s phone if you think there’s a chance they’d set up an additional account. To do this, go into snapchat on their phone, open settings (as explained above), and log them out. You’ll then see a screen with the profiles they have previously logged in with.

What you can do to Make Snapchat Safer for Teens

For me, the main thing the snapchat parental controls brought up was the fact I needed to have another chat with Syd about online safety. We had a chat about grooming, catfishing and scamming. (She knew about scamming as she’d been the victim of Roblox scams in her younger years, but didn’t really understand grooming or catfishing until our chat). You can’t just set up parental controls on snapchat and assume your child will be safe.

For me, an open dialogue is always super important. After talking to her dad, we agreed Syd could have snapchat on a trial basis IF parental controls were turned on, and she agreed we could look at her phone at any time to check her messages ourselves. (Hopefully we won’t need to do this, as so far, she’s only added friends and relatives). We agreed between the 3 of us that if there’s any sign of trouble, snapchat will be gone.

Things to Remember When You set up Parental Controls on Snapchat

It’s important to remember that parental controls are not a guarantee of child safety on any platform. It’s my opinion that it’s a parent’s responsibility to ensure their children aren’t at risk. You can do this by ensuring your kids know the risks, checking their phones to look for signs of concern, knowing the ways kids can get around their parents’ watchful eye. Be a Super Dad has some fab free parenting courses and information about parenting teens on their site. It’s well worth a look.

I was definitely the kind of teen who, (had social media been a thing back then), would have had a secret profile to plan weekend shenanigans with my friends, away from my parents’ watchful eye. Knowing I would have done this definitely makes me think outside the box and look for ways our kids could do it now.

Make sure your child has sufficient data if they are likely to be using snapchat when out and about too. Colette over at On an Adventure wrote a great post on how to manage your teens’ mobile phone bills recently.

My gut feeling is that teens should not be on social media without supervision. You know your child best though, so it’s up to you to decide the level of supervision they need. Syd is 11 and now has snapchat and insta, but none of the other platforms. If she wasn’t so mature for her age, there would be no way I’d agree to her having even those.

Let me know in the comments what you think.