Welcome to Parent Pixels, a parenting newsletter filled with practical advice, news, and resources to support you and your kids in the digital age. This week:
📊 How teens actually use Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok: A new Pew Research Center report puts some useful numbers to something parents have sensed but couldn’t quite quantify: teens use different platforms for fundamentally different purposes, and it might not be what you’d expect. Most teens use Instagram (84%) and Snapchat (86%) primarily to stay connected with family and friends. They go to TikTok for news (45%), compared to 39% on Instagram and 26% on Snapchat.
Speaking of: Snapchat is the most active direct messaging platform among teens. A majority (57%) of teen Snapchat users message people directly every day, compared to just 34% on Instagram and 24% on TikTok. And despite the perception that teens are constantly broadcasting their lives online, very few actually post regularly: 28% post daily on Snapchat, and only 16% and 19% do so on Instagram and TikTok, respectively.
The most striking finding is about mental health. Very few teens report that any single platform has hurt their mental health — only 11% say this of Instagram, and 9% say it of TikTok and Snapchat. In fact, Gen Z’s feelings about technology in general have shifted, according to a separate Gallup survey: Gen Zers have become angrier and less excited and hopeful about tech in the past year. Whatever teens are telling us about individual platforms, their broader relationship with technology might finally be changing.
🎙️ New! A free conversation guide for raising kids in the digital age: We’ve been working on something we’re super excited about, and it’s finally here! In partnership with Lisa Smith, the Peaceful Parent, we’ve created a free downloadable guide: Raising Kids in the Age of Screens— the conversations that keep kids safe online and make your relationship stronger.
This guide was built around one slightly uncomfortable insight: most parents are waiting for a crisis before they have conversations about bullying, self-image, predators, and more. In this free PDF, you’ll find the five essential conversations every parent needs to have (social media, AI, strangers, drugs and scams, and monitoring), age-specific conversation starters for tweens through teens, a script for the trust talk about parental monitoring, and a family digital agreement you can fill in together. (There’s also a 20% discount on our most popular BrightCanary plan!)
It’s designed to help you feel prepared, not overwhelmed. Download the free guide.
And don’t miss our CEO Karl Stillner in conversation with Lisa Smith on her podcast! Listen here.
🎮 Roblox just made its biggest safety update yet — here’s what changed: A few months after rolling out facial age verification, Roblox is back with another safety update: account types that automatically restrict content and communication settings based on a child’s age. Beginning in June, Roblox will feature two new account types for younger users:
Roblox also announced expanded parental controls: parents can now block specific individual games through age 15, manage direct chat settings through age 15, and use a new approval feature to grant access to specific games that fall outside a child’s default account type. While announcements like these always make us think “what took so long?”, it’s good to see common-sense protections rolled out on the platforms we know our kids use. The caveat is that parental controls only work if parents set them up, and this isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it feature: no platform update eliminates the need for ongoing monitoring and conversations with your child about what they’re doing online.
If your child uses Roblox, now is a good time to review their account settings and set up parental controls. Save this guide on how to monitor Roblox (and how BrightCanary makes monitoring easier).
Parent Pixels is a biweekly newsletter filled with practical advice, news, and resources to support you and your kids in the digital age. Want this newsletter delivered to your inbox a day early? Subscribe here.
From our new free guide, here are the five conversations every parent needs to have — with a starter for each:
Download the full guide with age-specific starters and scripts.
💬 A piece in The Guardian makes a solid argument in favor of the much-aligned parenting group chat. In a world where the village has largely moved online, these chaotic, occasionally unhinged group chats are doing real community work for a lot of families.
📣 We want to hear from you: If we launched BrightCanary on Android, would you use it? Do you know a parent who's been waiting for it? Email us at hello@brightcanary.io and let us know — it genuinely informs what we build next.
