Care, competence, or control? The evolution of parental supervision tools on social media platforms: A cross-platform comparison

Abstract

Interaction with social media constitutes a significant part of children’s online experiences, with the potential for both positive and negative experiences. Social media platforms provide parental “supervision tools” as a mechanism for balancing children’s autonomy with safeguards, promoting this function to parents to ensure safer digital practices for their children. This research adopts a constructivist framework to investigate the evolution and operationalisation of parental supervision across Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. Utilising qualitative methodology, this study combines archival data from an ethnographic walkthrough conducted in 2024, simulating a child’s and parent’s account for each platform. The cross-platform comparison reveals how platforms construct parental responsibility through their discursive and interface supervision mechanisms, expressed through macro-narratives, meso-contexts, and micro-practices. In doing so, platforms shift responsibility for regulation to parents as the accountable supervisory actors, while ultimately also controlling the supervision practices of these parents through the affordances and constraints offered through supervision tools.