With many regions around the world now considering tougher social media restrictions for teens, Snapchat has announced its own proactive measures to better protect young teen users within its Spotlight and Stories elements.
Starting this week, Snapchat is rolling out a new experience for users under the age of 16, which will ensure that younger teens will only be able to share Spotlight videos and Stories with mutually accepted friends.
As explained by Snapchat: “Previously, Snapchatters under 16 could only post to Spotlight, our public, short-form video platform without attribution to their profile. This allowed teens to participate, while helping to protect them from potentially unwanted contact that can come with public posting. Now, we’re evolving this experience.”
With the new system, users under 16 will only be able to share Stories and Spotlight videos with trusted, approved friends. Parents will also be able to monitor their kids’ contacts through Snap’s Family Center.
“Snapchatters in this age group will no longer be able to post Spotlight content visible to non-friend audiences,” Snapchat said.
Within this, there will be no followers and no favorite counts on content. Young users will only be able to post to a limited audience, with fewer incentives to drive posting behavior.
The change doesn’t extend to Snaps, with young users still able to share messages with whoever they like in the app. Though parents can also maintain oversight on this element through Snap’s parental controls.
The idea is that by limiting who can see content posted by teens and removing engagement incentives, it will lessen the attention element and reduce the potential negative impacts on impressionable users.
It will also ensure that parents can rest easier knowing that older users aren’t watching their kids’ videos in the app.
So will that reduce the negative impacts of Snapchat more broadly?
Well, definitely, there will be positives in limiting potential exposure, with the BBC reporting in 2024 that Snapchat is the most widely used platform for online grooming.
Public posting presumably plays some role in that, so eliminating this vector for harm can only be a benefit.
But it could also impact Snapchat’s engagement levels.
Presumably, Snapchat’s data has indicated that this won’t have a major impact, as more users are looking to share with friends anyway. But it will have some impact, and as such, it’s a significant step for Snapchat to take, particularly as the app faces growth challenges in its key revenue markets.
So why would Snapchat do this?
Well, again, various regions are looking to ban social media for teens under 16, which would wipe out all of these potential users for the app either way.
In February, Snapchat reported that it had locked or disabled over 415,000 Snapchat accounts in Australia that belonged to users who either declared that they were under 16, or whom Snapchat determined were likely underage.
In 2023, Snapchat reported that it had reached 8 million users in Australia. Matching that figure against this removal stat, that suggests that the app is at risk of losing at least 5% of its audience in each market that implements under-16 social media bans.
Maybe, then, risking a minor loss in order to appease regulatory groups is worth the risk.
Or maybe Snapchat just sees this as the right thing to do.
