In recent news, Snapchat has announced new safety features to protect teenagers from the dangers of sextortion. The popular app will now provide expanded warning pop-ups for teens when receiving messages from unfamiliar contacts. These warnings will alert users if the sender does not share mutual friends or contacts. Additionally, teens will be warned if the sender has been blocked or reported by others or if they are from a region where the teen’s contacts are not located, indicating a potential scammer.
Furthermore, Snapchat will prevent the delivery of friend requests for teens to or from accounts that do not share mutual friends and are located in regions often associated with scammers. These safety measures are specifically aimed at preventing financial sextortion, a growing concern on social media platforms where scammers exploit young users by convincing them to send explicit photos and then demanding payment to keep the images private.
Snap’s Global Head of Platform Safety, Jacqueline Beauchere, stated, “These features were designed to better protect teens from potential online harms and to enhance the real-friend connections that make Snapchat so unique.”
Law enforcement officials have warned of an increase in online sextortion scams targeting children and teens, with some cases leading to tragic outcomes such as suicides. In response, Snapchat and Meta have introduced new features to combat sextortion and protect young users. Snap CEO, along with other social media leaders, testified in a Senate subcommittee hearing earlier this year about their efforts to safeguard young people from exploitation.
Snapchat’s updates also include improvements to blocking tools, preventing users from creating new accounts to bypass a block. Additionally, the app will provide more frequent reminders to users, including teens, about their location settings on the Snap Map feature. Users can now easily update their location settings, remove their location from the map, and customize which friends can see their location.
These updates complement Snapchat’s existing teen safety features, such as the “Family Center” for parental supervision and mechanisms for removing age-inappropriate content. If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health matters, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 (or 800-273-8255) for assistance.
