Snapchat adds new safety features for teen users
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Snapchat says it’s working to make its app even safer for teens.

Snap is rolling out new features and policies aimed at better protecting 13- to 17-year-old users, including restrictions on friend suggestions and a new way to remove age-inappropriate content. A series of YouTube videos as well as an updated website describing the company’s teen safety and parental control policies were also launched.

Legislators, educators and parents are increasingly pressing social media platforms to protect young users from inappropriate content, unwanted adult attention, illicit drug sales and other issues. As part of a fall 2021 Senate committee hearing on youth safety on social media, Snap executives testified alongside TikTok and YouTube executives, promising new tools to help parents keep their teens safe on social media. As with other platforms, Snapchat has introduced new tools to help parents supervise their teens.

The announcement follows last year’s launch of Snapchat’s Family Center, which allows parents to see who their teenagers are communicating with on the messaging app. Teen safety measures include prohibiting young users from having public profiles and turning off teens’ Snap Map location-sharing tool by default.

As part of Thursday’s feature rollout, Snapchat will now require 13-to-17-year-old users to have a greater number of mutual friends in common with another account before that account will appear in Search results or as a friend suggestion, hoping to prevent teens from adding users to the app who they don’t know in person. In addition, teens will receive a pop-up warning if they are about to add an account with no mutual Snapchat friends or phone book contacts.