Snapchat will soon be able to alert parents when their teen leaves or arrives at certain locations

Snapchat introduces improved location sharing Family Centerthe parental control hub, the company announced Thursday.

Users have been able to share their location with others on Snapchat for some time, but the new addition will allow parents to be notified from the app’s Family Center when their teen leaves or arrives at designated locations, such as from school. Previously, parents had to find their teen on Snap Map or go to their profile to see where they were; This new option makes it easier for parents to keep track, because they can see their child’s location directly in Family Center.

The first time parents set this up, they send a request asking their teen to share their live location; notifications can be set for up to three locations on the Snap Map. Parents can therefore be alerted when their child leaves school, arrives at his piano lesson and then leaves for home.

With this new feature, Snapchat may want to compete with Life360, a popular service that allows families to track each other’s whereabouts and receive updates when family members arrive or leave specific locations.

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

Parents will soon also be able to see who their teen is sharing their location with on Snapchat. In addition, Snapchat will encourage users who choose to share their location with all their friends in the app to see who they are sharing their location with.

Snapchat says more than 350 million people use Snap Map every month, and these new features will help families stay connected while outside.

The new features announced on Thursday will be rolled out in the coming weeks.

Snapchat first launched Family Center in 2022 to give parents insight into how their teens are using the social networking app. In response, the company rolled out the hub increased Busy from lawmakers who want social media apps to better protect young users on their services.

Since rolling out the hub, Snapchat has updated it additional features every now and then to help parents protect their teens. However, parents may not even know that resources exist. Earlier this year, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel revealed that 20 million teens use Snapchat in the United States and that’s just that approximately 200,000 parents use the Family Center’s supervisory controls.