Snapchat is a communication service that most people use to connect with their real friends and family, through chatting, Snapping (talking through pictures), or voice and video calls.

Teens must be at least 13 to create a Snapchat account. If we determine that an account belongs to a person under 13, we terminate their account from the platform and delete their data. We hope you learn more about Snapchat from this page to help you make an informed decision for your family.

It’s critical that teens sign up with an accurate birthday so they can benefit from our Snapchat safety protections for teens. To help prevent teens from circumventing these safeguards on Snapchat, we don’t allow 13-17- year-olds with existing Snapchat accounts to change their birth year to an age of 18 or above.

We offer extra protections for teens on Snapchat to help keep the focus on connecting with close friends, preventing unwanted contact from strangers, and providing an age-appropriate content experience.

We offer easy ways for both teens and parents to confidentially report a safety concern to us – either directly in the app, or online for those who don’t have a Snapchat account.

Yes, and by default, we set key safety and privacy settings for teens on Snapchat to strict standards. 

Contact settings for all users are set to friends and phone contacts only, and can’t be expanded. 

Location-sharing is off by default. If Snapchatters decide to use the location-sharing feature on our Snap Map, they can only share their location with people they are already friends with. There is no option to ever share location with someone who is not an accepted friend.

Family Center is our in-app resource that offers parents the ability to do things like see who their teen is friends with and who they have messaged with recently, request their teen’s location, view their teen’s privacy and safety settings on Snapchat, and more.

No. On Snapchat, location sharing is always off by default. Snapchatters can only share their location with accepted friends, and Snapchatter have complete control to choose which specific friends they’d like to share their location with on Snap Map.

For Snapchatters who do share their location with all of their Snapchat friends, we recently added in-app reminders to review their selections. Snapchatters will see a pop up when they add a new friend who may be outside their real world network, prompting them to be extra thoughtful about their settings.

Content on Snapchat deletes by default to reflect the nature of real-life conversations between friends. However, if we find illegal content proactively or identify it through a report, we retain that content for an extended period in case law enforcement wants to follow up. We can also preserve available account information and content upon valid request from law enforcement.

If a Snapchatter experiences bullying or harassment, we encourage them to use our in-app tools to block the user or confidentially report the account to our Trust and Safety teams, so they can take quick action. We also give Snapchatters the option to report bullying they see happening to another user.

Find Friends (formerly called Quick Add) is a feature designed to help Snapchatters connect with people they are likely to know in real life. In order for a Snapchatter to show up in another Snapchatter’s Find Friends suggestions, one user typically must have the other’s phone number or email address in their respective phone contacts, or both users must have mutual contacts on Snapchat.  

In 2023, we launched additional protections for 13- to 17-year olds. We now 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.