Snap is releasing new resources for families including an updated parents guide that covers its protections for teens.
In a recent announcement, photo-sharing social media platform Snapchat unveiled a series of new safeguards aimed at enhancing the safety and privacy of its community of 13-17-year-olds from potential online risks. The latest features, including in-app warnings, etc., will roll out in the coming weeks.
The “In-App Warnings” feature will send a pop-up warning to a teen user if they add a friend with whom either they do not share mutual friends or the person is not in their contacts. This message will urge the teen to carefully consider if they want to be in contact with this person or not. Additionally, the company announced “Stronger Friending Protections” wherein Snapchat has raised the bar to require a greater number of mutual friends with another user before they can show up in Search results or as a friend suggestion. This will further reduce the ability of teens to connect with people they may not already be friends with.
Meanwhile, the American multinational company also added new in-app content that assists in explaining the online risks and shares important resources for Snapchatters, like as hotlines to contact for help. This content will be featured on Stories and surfaced to Snapchatters by relevant Search terms or keywords.
Talking about the recent measures, Snap says these “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.” In addition, Snap is releasing new resources for families including an updated parents guide that covers its protections for teens, tools offered by the company for parents, along with a new YouTube explainer series.
Once known as Picaboo, Snap lets its users send photos, videos, and messages that disappear after some seconds. The platform has over 750 million active monthly users and more than 200 million monthly active users in the country.
