Teens on Snapchat are more likely to encounter unwanted or harmful content on the platform, according to a new study.
A third of the 1,016 poll respondents said they had seen or received unsafe content or messages in the past week. More than half said they had had such an experience at least in the past year.
The findings suggest that Snapchat, a platform where messages disappear once viewed by the recipient, is much safer than parents might think, said Sarah Gardner, CEO of The Heat Initiative, an advocacy group responsible for the research.
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The top three types of risky experiences reported by teens up to three were unwanted communication, bullying, and sexually suggestive content and messages. About 1 in 6 respondents said they saw content related to hate speech and drugs or alcohol. A small percentage of young people confirmed that they had experienced graphic violence and self-harm on the platform.
More than 40 percent of respondents who received spam believe the sender is an adult.
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Gardner said the study’s results contradict Snap’s assertion that its security features prevent strangers from sending unsolicited messages to children.
“These results directly contradict that claim and show that it doesn’t happen,” Gardner said.
Mashable reached out to Snap for comment, but did not hear back before the story was published.
Last December, the Heat Initiative, which focuses on online safety and corporate accountability, conducted a survey of Snapchat users between the ages of 10 and 17.
As major social media companies fight to protect their record of youth safety, research results show the spread of dangerous content in one of the most popular platforms in the US By 2024, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel in testimony to Congress that more than 20 million American teenagers use Snapchat
In January, Snap settled a lawsuit brought by a teenager who claimed that Snapchat’s design features, such as algorithmic recommendations, led to the use of addiction and brain damage. Soon after, Snap introduced new parental controls for teenagers.
A separate survey of teenagers conducted last fall by the Pew Research Center painted a different picture of Snapchat as a platform that strengthened their friendships and did not negatively affect their mental health.
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How teenagers handle dangerous content on Snapchat
Snapchat’s community guidelines prohibit many of the experiences reported by youth in the survey, including the sale and promotion of illegal drugs, depictions of graphic violence, hate speech, and bullying.
44 percent of survey respondents said they had not seen unsafe content or messages in the past year.
Two out of five young people responded by closing the app or ignoring the activity, according to the survey. More than half of those who did so said that when they got older it was “normal.”
Gardner told Mashable that he was “horrified” to find that so many children were emotionally drained from the encounter.
“Right now, Snap is putting the onus on the kids themselves to navigate through a bombshell of unwanted content,” Gardner said. “What you see in the election is that children have been defeated by it.”
Although Snapchat allows users to block and report content they deem dangerous or unsafe, teenagers were far more likely to block a user than report it to the platform. Previous research by non-profit organization Thorn found that children often prefer to block rather than report a user after a dangerous online experience.
Dr. Mitch Prinstein, director of the Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told Mashable that this research should wake up parents.
“It is very important for parents to know that children’s social networks look very different from their own,” said Prinstein. “This study tells us what kids have been telling us for a long time: social media isn’t just a safe place to hang out with friends.”
Prinstein has served as a witness in lawsuits against Meta and other social media companies, though not Snap. He was not involved in the Heat Initiative research.
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Dr. Brian Levine, director of the UMass Cybersecurity Institute, told Mashable that the survey results are concerning but not surprising, given that the survey took a representative sample of young people who use the platform.
Levine, who has interviewed The Heat Initiative in the past but was not involved in the new study, said it is questionable whether major social networks recommend adults and children to each other through an algorithm.
Levine, a child abuse prevention expert who testified for the state in a New Mexico child safety case against Meta, said Snapchat could do more to prevent adults from engaging with teenagers.
Snapchat says it makes all accounts private by default and that users can only communicate with approved friends or people in their contacts. Users, however, may need to manually turn off visibility in the platform’s “Find Friends” feature. One in six survey respondents said the feature recommended accounts of strangers that appear to be managed by adults.
“Nobody’s looking for a perfect score here,” Levine said. But, he added, “where else in society do we freely mix children and adults in an algorithmic way?”
Levine said platforms can generally improve youth safety by establishing policies and procedures such as high-quality age verification, providing adult-only message encryption, and prohibiting children from connecting to their service through a virtual private network.
He also questioned certain design features of Snapchat, including the disappearing messages, which prevent children, parents, and authorities from gathering evidence in cases of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse: “To delete all messages – is that really the safest product for children?”
