Is Snapchat Safe for Teens?
For parents, deciding whether to allow your child or teen to use social media can be difficult. Snapchat is a particularly popular social media platform among teens. However, safety issues like a lack of age verification have led to recent lawsuits against the app’s parent company for allegedly enabling grooming, sextortion, and other child sexual abuse. Here’s what you need to know about the safety of Snapchat.
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Author: Kathryn Kosmides
Survivor Advocate
- Snapchat can be moderately safe for teens if privacy settings are fully enabled, your child is at least 13 years old, and you regularly monitor their activity.
- There is no way to make Snapchat completely safe for children, as the lack of age verification and parental controls can allow adult predators to target and exploit teen users.
- If your child has been sexually abused through Snapchat, Helping Survivors can connect you with an experienced attorney to provide more information on your legal rights and options.
Snapchat is a popular social media app with nearly 1 billion monthly users. Among its key features are the ability to share temporary photos and messages with others. While the app can be safe for teenagers when used responsibly and with parental oversight, Snapchat’s lack of certain meaningful safety tools poses real risks and dangers to children. Therefore, parents need to understand Snapchat’s features and the potential dangers minor users face on the app.
Over the last few years, numerous families and state government officials have filed lawsuits against Snapchat’s parent company for failing to protect children, citing limited safety features such as inadequate age verification and limited parental controls. The Snapchat lawsuits allege that this safety gap has allowed predators to target and exploit teens on the app.
Why Snapchat Is So Popular Among Teenagers
Snapchat is a social media app that has maintained popularity among teenagers since its launch in 2011. Although the app has default settings for teen accounts to focus on connections with known friends and age-appropriate content, it lacks a true age verification system—teens must simply “declare” that they are at least 13 when signing up. If a user fabricates their age, nothing will happen unless their account is reported, and they can continue using the app.
Teen protections cannot be deactivated for users aged 13 to 17, and their accounts are private by default. However, 16- and 17-year-olds have access to public profiles. Location sharing is deactivated by default for all users, but can be easily switched back on.
Snapchat also features messages that disappear after viewing, which may attract teen users. Other features include filters, group chats, AI chatbot interactions, augmented reality lenses, and more, each introducing its own safety concerns.
Major Risks Teens May Face on Snapchat
Cyberbullying and Harassment
Cyberbullying and harassment in group chats or private messages can take a serious emotional and psychological toll on teens. Additionally, the lack of identity verification on the app enables anonymous harassment, and disappearing messages can make bullying even harder to track.
Contact With Online Predators and Grooming
One of the most pressing concerns parents may have about Snapchat is the exploitation of children on the app. Historically, predators have taken advantage of Snapchat features like the lack of age and identity verification, location sharing, and disappearing messages to groom and manipulate young users.
The rate of grooming and other sexual offenses reported on Snapchat is extremely high compared to other social media platforms. According to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, police in the U.K. recorded over 7,000 offenses related to sexual communications with a child in 2025. In cases where the platform was identified, 40% involved Snapchat. Additionally, 80% of the children targeted were girls, while the youngest reported victim of online grooming was a four-year-old boy.
Sextortion and Exploitation
Sextortion is a form of child sexual exploitation in which children or teens are threatened or blackmailed, typically with the possibility of publicly sharing sexual images of them. Predators first coerce the child or teen into sending them explicit images or videos, then use threats or blackmail to demand additional sexual content, sexual activity, or money from the child.
In recent years, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has seen a dramatic increase in sextortion cases reported to the CyberTipline. Teenage boys are the most common recent targets of financial sextortion.
False Sense of Privacy From Disappearing Messages
On Snapchat, disappearing messages can create a false sense of security and anonymity, thereby encouraging risky behavior. While snaps disappear, screenshots can still be taken, and third-party apps can save snaps without other users’ knowledge.
Location Exposure
Even though teen accounts on Snapchat have location sharing deactivated by default, it can be enabled to share a teen’s precise location with friends and others nearby. This can allow predators to track a teen’s location, potentially leading to in-person meetups, sexual assault, or abduction. It’s important to keep Snap Map location sharing disabled for your child or teen.
Mental Health & Addiction
Features like Snapstreaks and notifications on Snapchat are designed to increase engagement, sometimes at the expense of teen mental well‑being. However, they pose the risk of developing anxiety, depression, self‑image issues, and compulsive use. Hundreds of lawsuits allege that social media companies have intentionally designed Snapchat and other platforms to be addictive.
Concerns About Snapchat’s AI Chatbot, ‘My AI’
Snapchat’s AI is a chatbot feature that cannot be disabled on the app. It has been flagged in multiple cases for spreading misinformation, giving inappropriate advice to minors, simulating human conversation to confuse younger users, and collecting or monitoring users’ data. The bot can also provide inaccurate health, mental health, or relationship guidance, causing further mental health issues.
How to Protect Your Teen on Snapchat
If you decide to allow your teen to use Snapchat, taking the following practical steps can ensure they have the safest experience possible:
- Familiarise yourself with Snapchat’s features.
- Engage the Family Center and parental rules.
- Discuss online safety openly, including how to identify a predator.
- Review privacy settings together.
- Disable Snap Map location sharing.
- Limit interactions to known friends.
- Remind teens not to share personal information.
- Discuss the risks of sending sensitive images.
- Encourage reporting suspicious accounts.
- Keep an open, non-judgmental line of communication with your teen so they feel comfortable coming to you if something goes wrong.
- If a predator does target your child, take immediate steps to protect them.
Lawsuit investigation underway
Has Your Child Been Exploited on Snapchat? Take Action
If your child or teen met a predator on Snapchat and experienced grooming or exploitation, your family may have legal options. A Snapchat lawsuit investigation is currently underway. Get in touch with our trusted legal partners for a free case evaluation, and to learn what steps you can take to hold Snapchat accountable.