A bipartisan group of attorneys general says TikTok and Snapchat should give parents more control.

The National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) sent a letter to TikTok and Snapchat this week to urge them to give parents the ability to monitor their children’s social media usage, and protect their children from online threats.  The letter was signed by 44 AGs, including Georgia’s Chris Carr.

The prosecutors stress that the social media companies could work more closely with parental control software to give parents stronger eyeballs into what their children could see.

Several parental control apps exist, and can give parents the ability to limit screen time, block certain websites, and read private messages. The AGs did not endorse any particular product, but highlighted a different section of the platforms that they say could put children’s physical or mental health at risk.

“Parental control is particularly essential on your sites due to the “Discover” and “For You” sections on your platforms, which propagate disturbing sexual content and explicit drug use to our youth,” part of the letter reads. “Content depicting abusive sexual relationships can seriously harm a child’s view of a healthy relationship and can help perpetuate domestic abuse and human trafficking.

“Parental control apps can give parents additional tools to try to help filter out much of this type of content,” it continues. The prosecutors’ letter also says those apps could alert parents if their kids express interest in self-harm or suicide.

Some parents metro Atlanta, however, have taken a more proactive approach to how they monitor their children’s social media usage.

“I know those apps are good, but kids find ways around them,” says Stephani Smith Satterfield in Cumming. She believes parental control apps can give a false sense of security, so prefers to go straight to the source for information on her children’s social media usage.

Satterfield is the mother of two sons. She and her husband decided when their boys would have access to social media, and which platforms.  They also decided they would have the boys’ account passwords.

“I will have all your passwords,” the couple explained to them. “This is not your device, it is my device. Everything in this house is mine. It’s not your car, it’s not your room, it’s all mine, and I’m teaching you how to use it responsibly.”

Satterfield also says they were careful to warn the then-young children ahead of time about the possibility of racy content.

“We also said things like, ‘Look. There are things you shouldn’t see. If it makes you uncomfortable, if it is a body part you would normally cover, you don’t look at that. If you see that, you come find us.”

In Atlanta, Mitch Leff and his wife are also the parents of two sons, and he says when they were younger, the boys were subject to random spot-checks of their cell phones, including their social media apps.

“Absolutely have their passwords,” says Leff. “There is no reason why your kids shouldn’t share every password—and you should have the code to unlock their phone.”

Leff notes apps like Snapchat, in which messages can disappear quickly, would require monitoring more frequently if a parent had reason to be concerned. He believes parents have the responsibility to actively monitor what their children are doing on social media.

“Teenagers are young. They don’t always make the best decisions,” he says.  Keeping an eye on the phones and the social media accounts kept at-risk content and behavior at bay, he says.

“I didn’t see anything that really alarmed me very often. The only thing on occasion was some bad language. But sometimes you’re a 16- or 17-year-old boy in conversation with your friends and you throw some words out there. That didn’t really bother me,” says Leff.

The NAAG cited a study from one parental control app, Bark, which analyzed 3.4 billion messages in 2021 across 30 apps. The analysis found that 93.31% of teenagers engaged in conversations about drugs or alcohol; 90.73% encountered nudity or sexual content online; and 74.6% of teens were involved in a self-harm/suicidal situation.

Satterfield and Leff both believe bypassing apps worked well for them and their children.

“There’s no reason why your kids’ phones should be locked to you,” says Leff.

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