Right now, we’re in a pivotal time where tech companies are receiving more and more pressure to take responsibility for kid’s online safety while using their platforms. After all, teens are their biggest user base, so it makes sense for them to add social media parental controls that limit some of the damage teens can experience.
Here’s the thing, technically there are some parental controls for many popular social media sites. Yes, even the big dogs like Instagram, Discord, TikTok, and Snapchat. It’s usually called something like “Family Center” or “Family Pairing.”
So the CEOs and spokespeople for these platforms will proudly state, “We already help keep kids safe on our site! In fact, we have parental controls to prove it!” But a quick look at these “controls” and it’s easy to see they are severely lacking in real protection for kids. Let’s take a look at some of the more significant areas where these platforms fall short.
1. Parents Get Very Little Control Or Insight
The insights that these platforms provide parents are very minimal. And some of them don’t even give parents the ability to manage anything, they just get to review select insights.
Snapchat’s Family Center, for example, gives parents this information:
- See who your child has sent Snaps or chats to in the past week
- Limit sensitive content in Stories and Spotlight
- View all their friends
- View location and request check-ins
And Discord’s Family Center shows parents:
- Recently added friends
- Servers joined or participated in
- Users messaged or called in direct or group chats
To be fair, these insights are helpful. If you can see your child is messaging an unknown user on Snapchat, then you can go to your child to investigate exactly what’s going on.
But what if you don’t happen to catch this interaction within the week Snapchat shows you this? What if these messages disappear or your child deletes them? How would you know if any inappropriate content was exchanged? What if someone you know is the one causing trouble (and not a stranger)? These are the massive loopholes that can lead kids into tricky situations without any way for parents to supervise them.
2. Kids Can Easily Disable It
Even if Instagram or TikTok or any other platform had the most amazing, robust parental controls, if it didn’t include a way to keep kids from turning off these settings themselves, all those controls would be in vain.
This isn’t to say all kids would immediately disable the controls you set, but the point is that they could. But the solution is so simple! All they have to do is add a parental PIN code to lock the controls. This way, to make any account changes, a parent would have to put in a code that only they know.
Despite how simple this is, very few platforms have adopted the feature. Roblox is one of those few and it’s also a key feature of the Bark Phone — all important settings are device-code protected.
3. Kids Have to Initiate the Set-Up Process
In the name of child advocacy, many parental controls for social media apps require the child to initiate the setup by having them send an invite link to the parent. We’re also strong advocates for kids having a healthy level of privacy online — this is why Bark only alerts parents to inappropriate content in their children’s messages. Additionally, we always encourage parents to talk with their children about why they use Bark to help keep them safer.
However, we also believe that parents have a right to protect their kids online, even if their child disagrees with it (and let’s be honest, most kids aren’t jumping at the chance to give their parents access to their social media accounts). The result is that this requirement can cause undue tension and stress in families.
How Bark Can Fill in the Gaps
Bark was built on the realization that there was a huge lack of tools at parents' disposal to keep their kids safe on social media. That’s why Bark allows parents to truly manage their children’s online activity with screen time schedules, web and app filters, and our powerful monitoring tool that can scan your child’s messages and alert them to inappropriate content.
Bark can even monitor some of these popular social media apps — Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, Discord, and more (Android only). So where these platforms fail to give parents real control or insight, that’s where Bark can step up to the plate! See how Bark can support your family’s social media safety efforts with our free, 7-day trial today.
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Bark helps families manage and protect their children’s digital lives.
