New Snapchat feature targets families with teens

Key Takeaways

Snapchat is adding live location sharing to its Family Center to help parents and teens stay updated on each other’s whereabouts.
Travel Notifications are also coming to Snapchat, and parents can set up alerts for when their teens arrive at or depart a certain location.
Snap Maps is used by over 350 million people a month.

Users have been able to share their location on Snapchat for quite a while now, but the popular social media app is taking things one step further to increase safety for parents and their teens who use the app.

Snapchat recently announced new location sharing features coming to its Family Center to help families stay connected while out of the house. Parents or guardians will soon be able to send a request to their teens asking them to share their live location. Parents can also share their live location back, so everyone knows one another’s whereabouts.

The feature also allows parents to get an alert from the app’s Family Center that notifies them when their teen arrives at or departs a specific location, like home, school or the gym. The new feature sounds very similar to how location sharing notifications work in Apple’s Find My app. The new family location features on Snapchat will be rolling out in the coming weeks.

Snapchat

Snapchat is a social media messaging app that allows users to send photos and videos to one another. With features like video calling and Snap Map, it lets users stay in touch more easily.

Developer: Snap, Inc.
Subscription cost: Optional Snapchat + available

How to share your location using the Find My app on iPhone

Using the Find My app, you, your friends, and your family can share their locations with each other.

Snapchat first launched Family Center in 2022

Snapchat

Snapchat says over 350 million people use Snap Map every month, and that live location sharing has been introduced to help parents and their teens stay more connected when they’re outside.

The new features will be available in Snapchat’s Family Center, which first launched in 2022 to give parents more insight into how their teens use Snapchat. To access live location sharing when it becomes available, parents can navigate to the Family Center on the app, select their teen, and request their live location, as seen in the image above. Additionally, parents will soon be able to view which friends their teen shares their location with on the Snap Map too, to help create a more informed dialogue about location sharing.

Snapchat emphasizes that location sharing is turned off by default, and must be enabled by the user. You also cannot share your location with someone on Snapchat who is not your friend. The app is also sending out in-app reminders to users who share their location with all their friends to review their selections.

A hand holds an iPhone with a Snapchat video call

How I make free and easy video calls on Snapchat

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Snapchat is also adding Travel Notifications

Stay informed on your families whereabouts

With Travel Notifications, families will soon be able to set up notifications for up to three locations on the Snap Map. For example, you can set your home, school, and the gym as locations and be notified whenever your teen arrives at or leaves them.

“We’re adding travel notifications to Family Center to give parents more peace of mind knowing their teen has arrived at class, left sports practice on time, or even returned home after a night with friends,” Snapchat said in a blog post.

Since Snapchat is so popular among today’s youth, I can see how these new features will be helpful to parents, especially if they use different types of phones. Live location sharing and travel notifications for families will be rolling out over the coming weeks.