Snapchat Improves Child Protection and Safety Terms
By Movieguide® Contributor
Snapchat has released a new set of features to keep children and teens safe from strangers on the app.
“Today we are announcing new features to further protect 13-17-year-olds from potential online risks,” Snapchat said in a September 7 statement.
“These features, which will begin to roll out in the coming weeks, are designed to 1) protect teens from being contacted by people they may not know in real life; 2) provide a more age-appropriate viewing experience on our content platform; and 3) enable us to more effectively remove accounts that may be trying to market and promote age-inappropriate content through a new strike system and new detection technologies,” the platform continued.
Snapchat already requires that teens can only communicate with other users with whom they have some kind of connection.
However, the platform is “launching a new feature that sends a pop-up warning to a teen if they add a friend when they don’t already share mutual friends, or the person isn’t in their contacts. This message will urge the teen to carefully consider if they want to be in contact with this person and not to connect with them if it isn’t someone they trust.”
“We already require a 13-to-17-year-old to have several mutual friends in common with another user before they can show up in Search results or as a friend suggestion,” the statement read. “We are raising this bar to require a greater number of friends in common based on the number of friends a Snapchatter has—with the goal of further reducing the ability for teens to connect with people they may not already be friends with.”
Engadget reported, “The company is also introducing a new strike system for accounts that share ‘age-inappropriate content’ in public-facing parts of the app, like Stories and Spotlight.”
With the new feature, the platform has committed to taking down inappropriate posts. For users who have too many inappropriate posts, their accounts will be removed.
Additionally, Snapchat has issued a new feature for parents that “covers our protections for teens, our tools for parents and a new YouTube explainer series.”
Movieguide® recently reported on Snapchat’s improvement to their child’s safety terms:
Snapchat has taken multiple steps to improve child safety on its platform, unlike other names on the National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s (NCOSE) 2023 Dirty Dozen List.
“Snapchat heard our concerns about sexual exploitation on its platform and has implemented significant changes after being placed on our 2023 Dirty Dozen List,” said Lina Nealon, NCOSE VP and Director of Corporate Advocacy. “Since Snapchat has made a public commitment to continued improvements around child safety, we are moving Snapchat to our ‘Watch List.’”
