Abstract: Following the Covid-19 pandemic, children have increased their use of mobile electronic devices toaccess the internet. Among the main applications used by children between 9 and 17 years old are the social andcommunication media platforms Instagram and TikTok. Consequently, they are more exposed to risky situations(e.g. objectionable content, sexual predators, cyberbullying, etc.). To address this scenario, we conducted a sys-tematic mapping study and a snowballing process evaluating 33 primary studies to identify recommendations andgeneral guidelines for parental control tools, which should be part of any social media app used by children. Basedonthisstudy,wederived16functional(FR)and13non-functionalrequirements (NFR) for IT companies to develop features that help caregivers and children promote online protection via assertive decisions and proper safeguards. We used those functional requirements as lenses of analysis of the two main social media software platforms largely used by children: Instagram and TikTok. Our findings revealed that TikTok’s parental control features are more ma-ture and present more options for supervising and restricting children’s online activities than Instagram’s. Therefore,this research expands knowledge about the features for parental control and raises the discussion around children’sprotection and welfare as relevant digital citizens.
Keywords: Parental Control, Children, Requirements, Apps, social media, Features