As concerns over screen time and teenage digital wellbeing grow among families in India, Snapchat has rolled out new parental oversight tools within its Family Centre feature, aimed at giving parents clearer insight into how their children use the platform.

The updates expand the information available to parents, including insights into how much time teens spend on Snapchat, details about new friend connections, and access to additional safety and educational resources. The company said the changes are intended to encourage informed conversations between parents and teenagers, while maintaining user privacy.

According to Uthara Ganesh, head of public policy for APAC at Snap Inc, the new features are designed “to help families have more informed conversations, while continuing to respect teen privacy. As digital habits evolve in India, we remain focused on building safety tools that are transparent by design, easy to use, and rooted in trust between parents and teens.”

Under the updated Family Centre, parents can now view the average amount of time their teen spends on Snapchat each day, based on activity over the previous week. The data also breaks usage down by feature, showing whether time is spent chatting or sending snaps to friends, using the camera, exploring Snap Map, or watching content on Spotlight and Stories.

Snapchat said this breakdown is meant to help parents understand not just how long their children are on the app, but how they are using it, offering more context for conversations about screen time and online habits.

Family Centre already allows parents to see their teen’s existing friends and any new friends added in the past week. With the latest update, parents will also be shown contextual information when a new friend is added.

This includes whether the new contact shares mutual friends with the teen, appears in their contact list, or is part of the same communities. Snapchat said these indicators are intended to help parents assess whether a new connection is likely to be someone their child knows offline.

The updates come as digital platforms face increasing scrutiny in India and globally over their impact on young users, particularly around excessive screen time, online safety and mental health.

Earlier this week, Snap reached an agreement to settle a tech addiction lawsuit in the US, ahead of a landmark trial in a case that claims the social media giants engineered products to hook an entire generation of young users, reports The New York Times. The settlement was announced in a hearing in California Superior Court in Los Angeles County, a week before the start of a trial in the first of these cases. That case was brought by a teenager identified as K.G.M.