Kids, teens, and young adults these days are all about capturing and sharing life’s moments with one another. Whether it’s what they ate for lunch, some funny thing their dog did, or their latest heartbreak, Snapchat offers an outlet to showcase their experiences, one “snap” at a time. The appeal behind Snapchat is that “snaps,” or messages sent and received within the app, disappear after an allotted amount of time. More on that later.
Snapchat allows users to connect with friends, play games, read the news, watch entertaining videos, and take fun quizzes, all on top of sharing little slices of your day and spicing them up with photo and video editing tools. However, there are some downsides to its features that teens and young children may not be aware of.
● Snap Map – Unless otherwise disabled (also known as Ghost Mode), Snap Map allows Snapchat users to view their friends’ locations on a map. While this may be convenient in some situations, many kids may add people they don’t know personally to their friends’ list. Strangers knowing the whereabouts of your child is enough to rattle any parent.
● Snapstreaks – A Snapstreak occurs when two users have “snapped” each other within 24 hours for 3 days in a row. Both begin to receive points toward their Snapchat score, which allows them to buy features in the Snap store, exclusive emojis, and other kinds of rewards. This can lead to anxiety and peer pressure issues from other kids to keep up the streak, and also take a massive amount of time from their day.
● Discover – Snapchat Discover is the place where celebrities, news outlets, and other users post their stories and snaps. Unless your child signed up using their correct birthdate, some of the ads in between posts could contain mature content. People are often offered quizzes to take, which are usually some kind of marketing tool. Other stories may ask to “swipe up” to learn more, and the pages you are led to often contain more ads.
● Snapcash – Snapchat allows users to send money to each other via the app. No explanation is needed as to how this could cause a problem.
The biggest issue with Snapchat is the misnomer that snaps will disappear forever after they are viewed. This is not the case. Anyone who has access to your snaps can take a screenshot of the picture on their phone. You can view how many times your image has been viewed and the number of times a screenshot has been taken. Once it’s out there, it’s out of your hands.
There isn’t a method to view your kid’s activity like there are on other social media platforms. Besides turning off location services and limiting who can see your story, there aren’t ways to filter how the app is used. The best method is to talk with your child about privacy and safety, and explain to them that these kinds of apps can be fun, but must be used carefully.
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