Snapchat’s New Tools Ensure Your Teens Are Safe In The Digital World

The thing about being a millennial parent is that we are great at multitasking. We can do three things at once, with unparalleled ease. 

• We reply to office messages while playing hide and seek with the kids in the evening.
• We can get our infants to sleep while ordering groceries on the phone.
• We can give our teens the freedom and power to make their choices and at the same time worry incessantly about their safety!

Teaching teens responsible digital behaviour is of paramount importance to us, as parents of digital natives. How are we as parents doing this?

“Why are stories on Snapchat built to disappear”, I ask my teen daughter, as I read about its features in an online article. As she casually sips posting on the platform, she tells me “You won’t get it, mom!” She might be true. I might not be as tech-savvy as her when it comes to understanding digital platforms, but the mommy brain is always on high alert when it comes to anything to do with my child’s safety- both in the real world and in the digital world. And as a parent, I am so glad that global platforms are taking the initiative to address and assuage these common concerns we parents have.

Snapchat, one of the most popular choices among today’s teens, has come up with an interesting initiative that is not just centered around teen safety but also in building better relationships between parents and teens.

About Snapchat’s New Safeguards

Snapchat aims to encourage open conversations between parents and their teenagers at home surrounding their online activities and how to stay safe while doing that. 

Here is a look at some of the new tools and features released by Snapchat keeping in mind the online safety of 13-17 year olds.

• Safer Contact: No unknown contacts will be able to virtually get near your kids unless they have mutual connections or are from their phone contacts
  • In-App Warnings: Launching a new feature that sends a pop-up warning to a teen if someone tries to add them as a friend when they don’t share mutual contacts 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.
  • Stronger Friending Protections: It is already required for a 13-to-17-year-old to have several mutual friends in common with another user before they can show up in Search results. This bar is getting raised 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
• An Age-Appropriate Content Experience: Snapchat is all set to focus on age-appropriate content on Stories and Spotlight, which includes the potential removal of suggestive content for 13-to-17-year-olds, enhanced tools to detect and remove inappropriate accounts, and potential extended proactive content moderation for media publishers
• New Strike System for Age-Inappropriate Accounts:  This helps to tackle rule violations, including age-inappropriate content, with repeated offenders facing potential account termination.
• Education About Common Online Risks: The community will have access to new in-app content developed in partnership with Young Leaders for Active Citizenship (YLAC) as important local resources.  In addition, Snap is releasing new resources for families, including an updated parents guide at parents.snapchat.com that covers our protections for teens, our tools for parents, and a new YouTube explainer series.