Snapchat is one of Gen Z and Alpha’s most popular communication apps: in 2024, Qustodio app insights showed that Snapchat was the 2nd most favored communication tool among 4-18-year-olds globally, while in the US, Snapchat ranked 1st, with kids in the country racking up an impressive average of 90 daily minutes on the instant messaging platform.
Despite its huge popularity, the app has managed to stay off the radar in a turbulent year for online safety: the discussion surrounding younger teens and digital danger has mostly circled around social media, but Snapchat has its own dark side that parents need to be aware of. Here’s what parents need to know about Snapchat and how to keep teens safe as they explore.
Snapchat: a simple summary
Snapchat is a messaging app where users can create messages, known as “snaps”, which can come in the form of a short video, a photo, or text. Snaps can be sent directly to contacts within the app, or uploaded to a story feed, available for 24 hours after upload. Snaps are easy to customize, letting users add filters, special effects, drawings, and captions.
Younger users like Snapchat as it’s a fun, creative way for them to talk to friends. Snapchat’s features make it easy for teens to keep others in the loop, through messages captured in the moment, a chronological story feed, and location sharing with the “Snap Map”.
What can my teen do on Snapchat?
When signing up for Snapchat, your teen has to enter their date of birth. Profiles are private by default for anyone using Snapchat. However, users between the ages of 13 and 17 are automatically given a different experience to users 18+. Younger teens on Snapchat can’t access public profiles, which allow users to share content with anyone, even if they’re not friends.
Teens on Snapchat can:
- Directly message friends on their contact list only
- Send short videos and photos to friends
- Update friends on their location, using the Snap Map to share where they are, and upload snaps showing what they are doing there
- Create a chronological story feed, updating others on what they’re doing throughout the day
- Use the Discover feature to browse news and updates from public profiles, such as celebrities, companies, and influencers
- Talk to Snapchat’s AI chatbot, My AI, a text-based bot designed to act like a friend and answer day-to-day questions within the app.
How old do you have to be to use Snapchat?
According to Snapchat’s terms of service, users have to be 13 and over to be able to create a profile and send snaps to contacts. Users enter their birthday on signup, but as there’s no verification process, it’s pretty easy for under-13s to bypass any age restrictions – much like with any social media or communications app with age limits.
What are the risks on Snapchat?
Disappearing messages
As messages can disappear on Snapchat after they’ve been viewed, this can create a false sense of security and anonymity, potentially emboldening users and encouraging risky behavior, such as sending sexually explicit messages or images. Younger users could be tempted to send content or text that they normally wouldn’t otherwise share, believing that it will vanish without a trace – despite the fact the receiver could easily screenshot conversations or images they’re sent over Snapchat. Snapchat does have a feature that tells users if their message has been screenshotted, but nothing prevents other users from doing this.
Cyberbullying
Because of Snapchat’s anonymity, teens can be emboldened in many ways, including bullying. Users can send hurtful messages and content, believing that they will disappear and they will not be able to be held accountable. Snapchat’s vanishing messages make it difficult for victims of bullying and harassment to document evidence and report the behavior.
Location sharing
Teens often use location sharing as a status symbol to signal close bonds with ‘best friends’ or new romantic partners. Additionally, this Snapchat feature could serve as a safety feature, particularly in group settings like parties.
However, Snap Map’s location tracking feature raises privacy concerns as, when switched on, your teen’s location is continuously shared with friends and strangers, and can inadvertently reveal sensitive locations like homes and schools. While Snap Map can’t be turned off, users can hide their location by enabling ‘Ghost Mode’, which prevents others from seeing where they are; however, Snapchat will still track your location data for internal purposes. Alternatively, you can disable location services entirely in device settings, restricting the app’s use of all location-based features.
Predators
Snapchat accounts aren’t verified, making it easy for online predators to misrepresent themselves on the platform by creating false identities to deceive young users. According to figures supplied to the NSPCC, a UK children’s charity, Snapchat is the most widely used platform for online grooming, with almost half of grooming offenses where the platform was known occurring on Snapchat. The heavy emphasis on anonymity and disappearing content allows predators to target, groom, and manipulate young victims, especially as evidence of their interactions quickly disappears unless screenshotted or recorded.
Violence
Snapchat’s community guidelines don’t allow posts containing threats, violence, or harm, but this doesn’t stop them from slipping through the cracks. Fights, sexual assault, violent attacks, and other disturbing content are often shared on social media, uploaded to stories on Snapchat and spread around friends lists quickly.
Gamification
Snapchat rewards users for being active on the platform, building up something called a “Snapstreak” between contacts. By sending and receiving photo or video Snaps between you and a friend in a 24-hour period, you add to a daily streak, with the numbers building up for each day you interact. If you’re silent during this 24-hour period, your streak will vanish, resetting the number to 0. Through this gamified approach, some teens could be encouraged to log into the app every single day to keep their streak up.
Can I make Snapchat safe for my teen?
Snapchat raises several significant concerns for teen users, but if your child is already using the app, or if you are happy with them using Snapchat, there are some measures you can take to make it somewhat safer.
- Understand the app: Familiarise yourself with Snapchat’s features and how they work. Knowing how the app works will help you guide your teen effectively.
- Use your teen’s correct age: Ensure your teen enters their correct birth date when creating an account to activate age-appropriate settings and restrictions.
- Control privacy settings: Adjust your teen’s privacy options to restrict who can contact them, view their stories, and see their location.
- Manage friend requests: Teach your teen only to accept friend requests from people they know in real life.
- Limit screen time: Set boundaries on how much time your teen spends on Snapchat and encourage them to balance their screen time with offline activities.
- Open communication: Talk to your teen about online safety, the importance of privacy, and the risks of sharing personal information. Ensure they know they can come to you if they feel uncomfortable when using Snapchat.
- Use parental controls: Snapchat offers their own parental tools through the Family Center. This tool allows you to see your teen’s friend list, new friends they have added, limit content your child can view, and disable your child’s access to My AI. However, screen time and app use can’t be monitored, so to set up a healthy screen routine, you may want to set app limits using a parental control tool like Qustodio.
- Manage problematic users and content: Make sure you and your teen both know how to block and report problematic users and content.
- Lead by example: Demonstrate responsible online behavior by modelling healthy usage yourself.
Qustodio’s final recommendation
Snapchat allows children to chat with friends, explore and express themselves creatively, and build connections with those around them. That said, the potential for bullying, risky behavior, exposure to sexual content, and the possibility of grooming should set off alarm bells for any concerned parent.
We don’t recommend Snapchat for younger teens, as the benefits don’t particularly outweigh the risks at this age. However, as with most social media, older teens need to understand the risks they will face as they navigate the online world, and be given the tools and guidance necessary. If you’ve decided to allow your child access to Snapchat, engage in conversations about what they should be sharing on the platform, revise the safety features and make sure they know how to use them, and check in on how their app use is making them feel on a regular basis. Finally, to support your teen as they explore online, make sure they know they can come to you when they need help – no matter whether it’s in the digital world or not.
