Nearly every popular media network offers parental controls, but many parents don’t know about them. According to a Washington Post report earlier this year, by the end of 2022, less than 10% of teens would have enabled parental controls on Instagram, and only a single-digit percentage of parents would use them.
As lawmakers and civil rights groups have raised concerns about the potential harm social media can cause to young users, tech companies have long argued that the parental controls they offer protect children. But parental controls aren’t turned on by default, so they don’t do much to protect users unless parents actually allow them to.
Each platform approaches parental controls a little differently, but most start by allowing parents to monitor who their children are interacting with. Then, some social media platforms go a step further by allowing parents to intervene in how their children use the app.
TikTok seems to be the platform where parents can have the most control over their teens’ usage. The ByteDance-owned company has received considerable scrutiny from lawmakers, arguably more than any other platform on this list. To convince lawmakers, the app offers parental controls that are much more advanced than those on apps like Instagram and Snapchat.
And while most social media platforms offer some kind of parental controls, some have had them longer than others. Meta has been under scrutiny for its potential negative impact on teens and young people for over a decade, and has had parental controls for years, while platforms like Discord have flown under the radar and only recently introduced parental controls.
Before going into the specifics of control methods, it is important to note that teens can also create secret accounts and that most parental controls on social networks rely on communication between both parents and teens.
This guide is designed to help parents more easily navigate and understand the parental controls offered by popular social media companies, detailing how controls vary across platforms.
How Instagram’s Parental Controls Feature Works
Meta-owned Instagram offers parental controls through its Family Center. The social network gives users the option to create a “supervised account” for their children ages 13 to 17. Both the child and their parent must consent to participation.
Family Center allows parents and guardians to monitor their children’s accounts by checking how much time they spend on social networks. Parents can intervene in their children’s app usage by setting daily time limits or adding scheduled breaks. This feature allows parents to ensure that their children only use apps for a certain amount of time and not during homework or school hours.
You can also check your teen’s followers and follower list to monitor who can see their posts and send messages. Parents can also view any reports their teen has submitted to Instagram.
Parents can also view their teen’s account privacy settings, sensitive content settings, and DM settings. Parents can discuss these settings with their teen to help keep them safe.
TikTok offers powerful parental controls
Like Instagram, TikTok allows parents to link their accounts with their teens’ accounts through a “family pairing” feature. After doing so, parents can decide how much time their teens can spend on the app each day. They can set screen time limits for their teens and receive a summary of how much time their teens spend on the app.
The app allows parents to mute their child’s push notifications (TikTok mutes notifications for 13-15 year olds from 9 p.m. to 8 a.m. by default). Parents can also choose to pause their child’s notifications for a custom time period.
TikTok allows parents to take additional steps that other platforms on this list don’t. Parents can restrict certain types of content. Parents can select keywords or hashtags to exclude certain content from their teen’s For You and Following feeds. They can also enable “Restricted Mode,” which automatically limits teens’ exposure to inappropriate or inappropriate content.
Parents can also decide whether their child can search for videos, hashtags, or live videos. They can also control whether the app can recommend their child’s account to others. Parents can decide who can comment on their child’s videos and who can see their favorite content.
When it comes to DMs, parents can limit who their teen can message or turn off direct messages altogether. It’s important to note that TikTok’s DMs are only available to accounts that are 16 years or older.
How to set up parental controls on Snapchat
Snapchat gives parents access to a “Family Center” where they can monitor some of their teen’s activities on the app. Parents must create their own Snapchat account and then link it with their teen.
When parents pair the two accounts, they can see who their child is friends with on Snapchat. They can also see who they have messaged in the last seven days. Plus, parents can see a full list of members in groups their child has been active in over the past week.
Parents cannot see messages shared with their children. They can only see a list of people their children have recently sent messages to.
As with TikTok, parents can limit their children's ability to see sensitive content in Stories and Spotlight.
If parents see an account that they are concerned about, they can report it to Snapchat’s Trust & Safety team. However, unlike TikTok and Instagram, parents can’t monitor or limit the amount of time their children spend on the app.
How to set up parental controls in Discord
Discord offers a “Family Center” that allows parents to monitor their child’s activity on the platform. After signing up for Family Center, parents receive a weekly email summary with information about their teen’s activity. Parents can see which Discord communities and users their teen is talking to, but they cannot see the content of the conversations themselves.
Parents can see their child's recently added friends, display name, and avatar. They can also see who their child has messaged or called directly or in group messages, and the time of their last message or call.
Additionally, parents can see which servers their children have joined or participated in, and can check the server icon and number of server members.
Discord is used regularly by younger audiences, but the platform has until recently been largely left out of the conversation about social networks and their potential to harm children. In the past, Discord was able to sit on the sidelines while Congress questioned Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and Facebook. But Discord was asked to testify at Congress’ most recent hearing on child exploitation.
How to use Facebook's parental controls
You might be surprised to see Facebook on this list, as it is largely known as a social network for older people. But while it may seem like teenagers aren’t using Facebook, a recent report shows that young people are still using the Meta-owned platform.
Parents can access Facebook’s supervisory controls in the same place they monitor their child’s Instagram activity. They can see how much time their child spent each day on the Facebook app in the past week and the average daily time spent that week. To control how much time their child spends on the app, parents can set scheduled breaks.
Parents can also see their child’s Facebook friends, privacy settings, and content preferences. They can also see people and pages that their child has blocked.
Guardianship of X
X, formerly known as Twitter, is the only social media platform on this list that does not offer parental controls. Twitter bans users under the age of 13 from the platform, but many people lie about their age to join the platform.
Compared to other social media platforms, X is saddled with adult content. The company has also relaxed its hate speech filters since being acquired by Elon Musk, and is fairly lenient on cyberbullying and hate content compared to the other platforms on this list.
While the majority of teens don’t use X, a 2023 Pew Research study found that 23% of teens have used the social network. That’s still a significant number, especially on a platform that doesn’t take any steps to protect teens.
X, like Discord, has managed to fly under the radar when it comes to congressional concerns about protecting children online, but the company did participate in a congressional hearing on child exploitation earlier this year.
