Parental controls are offered by nearly every popular media network, but many parents don't know about them: A Washington Post report earlier this year found that by the end of 2022, fewer than 10% of teens on Instagram had enabled parental control settings, and the percentage of parents who used the controls was in the single digits.
In response to concerns from Congress and civil rights groups about the potential harms that social media poses to young users, tech companies have long argued that the parental controls they offer protect kids, but because they're not on by default, they do little to protect users unless parents actually enable them.
While each platform approaches parental control a little differently, most start by allowing parents to monitor who their teens are communicating with. Some social media platforms go a step further by allowing parents to have more influence over how their teens use the apps.
TikTok appears to be the platform where parents have the most control over their teens' use. The ByteDance-owned company has faced more scrutiny from lawmakers than any other platform on this list. In order to garner legislative support, the app offers far more advanced parental controls than apps like Instagram and Snapchat.
And while most social media platforms offer some sort of parental controls, some have had them in place longer than others: Meta has been under intense scrutiny for its potential negative impact on teen and younger users for over a decade, and as such has had parental controls in place for many years, while platforms like Discord have flown under the radar and only recently implemented parental controls.
Before diving into controls, it's important to realize that teenagers can also create secret accounts, and that most parental controls on social networks rely on communication from both parents and teens.
We created this guide to help parents easily navigate and understand the parental controls offered by popular social media companies, and we also provide details on how parental controls vary from platform to platform.
How Instagram parental controls work
Image credit: Instagram
Meta-owned Instagram offers parental controls through its Family Center service: The social network gives users the option to create “supervised accounts” for teens ages 13 to 17. Both the teen and a parent must consent to joining.
Family Center allows parents and guardians to see how much time their teens spend on social networks and monitor their children's accounts. Parents can intervene in their teens' app usage by setting daily time limits and adding breaks. This feature allows parents to ensure that their teens only spend a certain amount of time on apps and that they are not using them during homework or school hours.
Parents can also view their child's following and followers lists to monitor who can view their posts and send them messages, as well as view reports their child has sent to Instagram.
Additionally, parents can view their child's account privacy settings, sensitive content settings, and DM settings, so they can discuss these settings with their child to ensure they are protected.
TikTok offers strong parental controls
Image credit: TikTok
Similar to Instagram, TikTok allows parents to link their account with their teen's account using the “Family Pairing” feature. Once linked, parents can decide how many hours per day their teen can use the app. Parents can set screen time limits for their teen and get an overview of the time their teen spends on the app.
The app also allows parents to mute push notifications for their teens (TikTok mutes notifications for teens ages 13-15 by default between 9pm and 8am), and parents can also pause teen notifications for custom times.
TikTok allows parents to take an extra step that the other platforms on this list don't. Parents can restrict certain types of content. They can select keywords and hashtags to exclude certain content from their teen's “Recommended” and “Following” feeds. They can also enable “Restricted Mode” to automatically limit their teen's exposure to inappropriate or inappropriate content.
Additionally, parents can decide whether their kids can search for videos, hashtags, and live videos. They can also control whether their kids' accounts can be recommended to others on the app. Parents can decide who can comment on their kids' videos and who can view their liked content.
When it comes to DMs, parents can restrict who can message their teenage kids or disable direct messages altogether. It's worth noting that DMs on TikTok are only available on accounts of users aged 16 and over.
How to Set Up Parental Controls for Snapchat
Image credit: Snapchat
Snapchat offers access to a “Family Center” that allows parents to monitor some of their teen's activity on the app. Parents must create their own Snapchat account and connect it to their teen's account.
Once parents have paired the two accounts, they'll be able to see who their child is friends with on Snapchat. They can also see who their child has messaged in the past seven days. Additionally, parents can see a full list of members of groups their child was active in over the past week.
It's worth noting that parents can't see the messages their children have shared — all they can see is a list of people their children have recently messaged.
Like TikTok, parents can restrict their teens' ability to view sensitive content in Stories and Spotlight.
If parents come across an account that concerns them, they can report it to Snapchat's Trust and Safety team, but unlike TikTok and Instagram, parents can't monitor or limit the time their kids spend on the app.
How to Set Up Parental Controls for Discord
Image credit: Discord
Discord offers a “Family Center” that allows parents to monitor their children's activity on the platform. When parents sign up for Family Center, they receive a weekly email summary with information about their child's activity. Parents can see which Discord communities and users their children are interacting with, but cannot see the content of the conversations themselves.
Parents can see the friends their child recently added, including their display names and avatars, who their child has messaged or called in direct and group messages, and the time of the last message or call.
Additionally, parents can see which servers their children have joined, including the server icon and the number of members on the server.
Though Discord is heavily used by a young user population, the platform has, until recently, been largely excluded from discussions about social networks and their potential harm to children. Until now, Discord has been able to stay on the sidelines while Congress has grilled Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and Facebook. But Discord was called to testify at the most recent Congressional hearing on child exploitation.
How to Use Facebook Parental Controls
Image credit: Meta
Some may be surprised to see Facebook on this list, as it's known primarily as a social network for older people. But while it may seem like teenagers aren't using Facebook, recent reports suggest that younger people are still using the Meta-owned platform.
Parents can access Facebook monitoring controls in the same place they monitor their child's activity on Instagram. They can see how much time their child spent on the Facebook app each day for the past week, as well as the average time per day for that week. Parents can also set break times to manage the time their child spends on the app.
Additionally, parents can see their teen's Facebook friends, privacy settings, content settings, and more, as well as see the people and pages their child has blocked.
X Parental Controls
X, formerly known as Twitter, is the only social media platform on this list that doesn't offer parental controls. Twitter bans users under the age of 13 from using the platform, but many people lie about their age to join the platform.
Compared to other social media platforms, X is rife with adult content. The company has also relaxed its hate speech filters since being acquired by Elon Musk, and is fairly tolerant of cyberbullying and hateful content compared to other platforms on this list.
While the majority of teens don't use X, a 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that 23% of teens have used the social network. This is still a significant number, especially on a platform that doesn't do anything to protect young people.
Like Discord, X has managed to stay under the radar from Congressional concerns about protecting children online, though the company did attend a congressional hearing on child exploitation earlier this year.