Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

SocialWatch was built by a small independent team of parents, engineers, and researchers who watched the gap between what people experience on social media every day and what the people around them understand about it grow into a real safety problem. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by Meta Platforms, Instagram, TikTok, X, or any social media platform. Our purpose is awareness, not surveillance: a person can follow hundreds of accounts, and the content those accounts publish is endless — no one can realistically read through all of it. When someone chooses to share their social media environment with a person who cares about them, we do that work automatically — turning what they follow every day into something they — and a parent, friend, or mentor they trust — can read, recognize, and have an honest conversation about, early, before a quiet pattern becomes a crisis. In the cases that matter most, that conversation can help families recognize concerning patterns earlier and respond with care.

SocialWatch analyzes the public content of the accounts a person follows on social media — content that person has chosen to share with you by accepting your invitation — and turns it into a Network Influence Environment Assessment: a readable picture of the digital world that surrounds them. It is a conversation tool: a way to make sense of your own online environment — or, when someone invites you in, a starting point for a parent, guardian, friend, or mentor to understand the world of influences surrounding a person they care about. It is never a substitute for clinical, legal, or professional judgment, and the report describes the environment around a person — not the person themselves.

SocialWatch is built for self-awareness and for families — for understanding your own online environment, and for parents and guardians seeking to understand the online environment shaping their children. Friends and mentors can take part too, when someone invites them in. You must be 18 or older to use SocialWatch, and it may only be used to analyze the social media environment of someone aged 13 or over — never a child under 13. It is NOT a background check, a consumer report, or an automated decision-making system. The report must NOT be used — by you or by anyone you share it with — to make decisions about employment, hiring, firing, promotion, tenancy, credit, insurance, immigration, child custody, criminal justice, or any other decision that produces a legal or similarly significant effect on the subject. We are not a Consumer Reporting Agency under the U.S. Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), and our reports are not 'consumer reports' as defined by the FCRA. If you need a report for any of those decisioning purposes, you must use a properly regulated background-check provider instead. Using SocialWatch for any of those purposes violates our Terms of Service.

Instagram's Family Center and TikTok's Family Pairing are genuine steps forward, and we encourage every parent to turn them on. They make teen accounts more private by default, let you set screen-time limits, restrict who can message your teen, filter mature content, and even give you a sense of the topics shaping their feed. Used well, they are a strong first layer of protection — and inside their own apps they can see things we never will, such as messaging metadata from a linked account. What those tools don't do is the work SocialWatch was built for. Each one operates only inside its own platform, each requires your teen to link their account into supervision first, and each describes the feed in broad strokes — a topic like 'fitness' or 'news', or a filter toggled on or off — rather than the actual public content shaping it. A person can follow hundreds of accounts across multiple platforms — no parent can read all of that. SocialWatch works differently: the person you invite voluntarily shares the list of accounts they follow, and we analyze the public content of those accounts automatically — turning it into a readable Network Influence Environment Assessment grouped into research-informed dimensions, with the per-area evidence open for you to inspect yourself. The platforms tell you the shape of one feed; we help you read the substance of the environment around someone, early enough to recognize a quiet pattern and have an honest conversation about it. This is a starting point for awareness and conversation — not a verdict, and not a replacement for the platforms' own safety tools. We recommend using both.

We only analyze information publicly available on the internet: posts, captions, profile bios, and links — content the account owners have chosen to make public and visible to any internet user without a login. The only thing we receive from the person you invited is a list of handles (usernames) of the accounts they follow — shared willingly by them when they accept your invitation. From those handles, we look exclusively at what is already public on each profile. We never receive, access, or store any private data belonging to the invited person. We do not access direct messages, non-public stories, drafts, saved items, location history, app analytics, login activity, or device contacts. We never store passwords, log into anyone's account, or take any action on behalf of any person on any platform. We have no special API relationship with Meta, TikTok, X, or any other platform. We do not perform facial recognition, biometric inference, or photo-based identification. All analysis is based on text and metadata only.

Our classification pipeline uses leading commercial large language models accessed via their official APIs. For every public account in the network, the pipeline does three things: 1. It collects a sample of the account's public posts and profile metadata. 2. The model reads that sample and assigns tags from a fixed, human-curated taxonomy (the Feed Fingerprint taxonomy). It is never asked to diagnose, profile, or pass judgment on any person — only to answer 'is this kind of content present in this public feed, yes or no?' 3. Those tags are grouped into dimensions inspired by established academic and public-health research. Our dimensions are our own; we are not formally affiliated with, licensed by, or endorsed by any of the research traditions that informed our thinking — among them Bronfenbrenner's ecological model, the CDC's YRBSS, Common Sense Media's content-rating framework, Search Institute developmental assets research, PIRUS / PERIL radicalization studies, Pew Research political typology, Holland's RIASEC model, and Schwartz's theory of basic human values. We do not fine-tune models on user data, our model providers do not use API inputs or outputs to train their models by default (and we have not opted in to any data-sharing program), and the model only describes what is present in a public feed — it never makes a decision about a person.

Yes — and that's by design. SocialWatch is built on consent, not surveillance. Nothing is analyzed until the person you want to learn about receives an invitation from you, voluntarily accepts it, and explicitly shares their following list with you through the platform. When they accept, they are shown a clear explanation of what SocialWatch does, what data is used, and how the report is generated — so they understand exactly what they're agreeing to. There is no background check, no silent scan, and no analysis of anyone who hasn't chosen to participate. This means SocialWatch works best as a starting point for an open conversation: you send the invitation, they decide to share, and the report gives both of you something concrete to look at together. You must be 18 or older to send an invitation. When the person whose environment is being analyzed is a minor, SocialWatch may only be used by that minor's parent or legal guardian — the only person who can consent to the analysis on the minor's behalf.

SocialWatch only reads content that the followed account owners have chosen to make public. We do not bypass any login wall, we do not access private accounts, we do not download or republish posts, and we do not retain the raw public content — it is used only in the moment to compute the report's signals and is then discarded. Only the derived signals are kept.

No — the report is a starting point for awareness and conversation, not a verdict. SocialWatch is an informational tool, not a substitute for professional, clinical, legal, or medical advice. If you have serious concerns — for example about self-harm, eating disorders, hate, harassment, addiction, or radicalization — please consult a qualified professional (mental-health provider, family doctor, legal advisor, or other specialist) or contact the appropriate helpline listed in our Guidance directory.

Treat it as a starting point for a conversation, not a conclusion. Open the per-area evidence in the report so you can read the specific public content the signal is based on, verify it for yourself, and consider the context. If the pattern looks real and concerning, the next step is a calm conversation with the person involved and, where appropriate, a qualified professional.

AI systems can produce false positives and misread nuance, irony, and context. If a result seems wrong, open the per-area evidence for that signal and review the original public content directly. If you believe an account has been misclassified, you can mark it as safe — it will be removed from the analysis and the report will update automatically.

Yes. We never ask for your social media password and we cannot log in as you. We do not sell your data, we do not use it to train AI models, and we do not share it with advertisers. Here is exactly what happens with your data: - The invited person requests their own data export directly from the social platform (Instagram or TikTok), downloads it to their device, and uploads it to us. We read only the list of handles (usernames) of the accounts they follow from that file — nothing else in the export is used or kept. They review and approve what is shared before anything is sent, and no software from us ever runs on their device or their social media account. - From those handles, we briefly access the publicly available content on each profile — information visible to any internet user without a login — solely to detect the signals the report needs. This public content is never stored; it is used in the moment, the signals are extracted, and the content is discarded. - The long-lived record is only the derived signals (tags, scores, area aggregates) used to render the report on demand. Full details are in our Privacy Policy.

If you encounter technical issues, want to report an inaccurate result, request removal of an account from current and future reports, or have any other question, email contact@socialwatch.ai. We appreciate all feedback.

SocialWatch is available only in the United States and Latin America, and we design it to operate within the laws of the territories where it is offered. Who can hold an account: You must be 18 or older to create a SocialWatch account and send an invitation. Whose environment can be analyzed: The social media environment we analyze must belong to someone aged 13 or older. We do not knowingly collect or process any information relating to a child under 13, in line with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). If we learn an invitation concerns someone under 13, we delete the associated data. When the analyzed person is a minor (13–17): SocialWatch is intended to be used by the minor's parent or legal guardian, who holds the account and provides consent for the analysis; the minor participates by sharing the accounts they follow. We design SocialWatch with transparency, parental involvement, privacy protection, and youth safety in mind, and we continually monitor developments in youth online safety regulation. We never sell or share a minor's personal information. Not a background check: SocialWatch is not a Consumer Reporting Agency and our reports are not 'consumer reports' under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). You may not use SocialWatch to make decisions about employment, housing, credit, insurance, or any other purpose covered by the FCRA. Your privacy rights: Under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA) and similar state and national privacy laws in the territories we serve, you have rights to access, delete, and correct your personal information, and to opt out of any sale or sharing. We do not sell your data. See our Privacy Policy.

No. SocialWatch analyzes publicly available content published by accounts a person follows. Following an account does not necessarily imply endorsement, agreement, support, or participation. The report is designed to describe the online environment surrounding a person, not to determine their beliefs, intentions, identity, mental health status, or future actions.