During today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on children’s online safety, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said that 20 million teens use Snapchat in the U.S. and about 200,000 parents use Family Center’s supervision controls. He also shared that nearly 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 regarding the use of Snapchat’s parental controls.
Snapchat’s Family Center, which allows parents to see who their teens’ friends are on the app and who they’re communicating with, will debut in 2022.
Spiegel shared the numbers after Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) asked the CEOs of Snap, Meta, TikTok, X, and Discord to disclose how many minors use their platforms and how many parents use the parental supervision controls the services offer.
“we Creates a banner to family center on the the user “Profiles,” Spiegel said after being asked what Snapchat was doing to make sure parents and guardians were aware of the tools. “So the Accounts we Believes maybe the age Which they Can He is Fathers Can be seen the entrance a point inside family center Easily.”
Snap introduced parental controls in response to growing pressure on social networks to better protect young users from harm. Snapchat’s rollout of Family Center follows the launch of similar parental control features across other apps, including Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
Spiegel was the only CEO to share numbers in response to Senator Padilla’s question.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was unable to provide specific numbers, but said the company is running “extensive advertising campaigns” on and off its platform to raise awareness of its parental supervision tools.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino said that less than 1% of the platform’s 90 million U.S. users are between 13 and 17 years old, and that the company is discussing parental controls.
“being a 14 Month old a company we Owns Re-prioritize child protection And safety Yaccarino said. “WH Owns Just I started to He speaks on And Discusses the how we Can Improves Those with My father Regulations.”
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said he was unable to share details, but TikTok was “one of the first platforms” to give supervision controls to parents. Discord is working to raise awareness of parental controls through promotional videos and in-app prompts, said Jason Citron, CEO of Discord.