Snapchat on Tuesday announced a series of new safety features, including an updated account blocking feature and enhanced friend-add protections, that will make it harder for strangers to contact users on the platform. The new moves come amid concerns about predators exploiting teens on the social media app, which often leads to more serious cases such as sextortion.
One of the latest updates to address these issues is an improvement to Snapchat's existing user blocking tool, which blocks new friend requests from bad actors who have already been blocked by a user, sent using other accounts created on the same device. This can further limit access from other existing or new accounts created by the blocked account, Snap said in a statement.
Snapchat will introduce more frequent reminders on the Snap Map to let you know which friends you're sharing your location with. Snapchat will also introduce simplified location sharing features that make it easier to customize which friends see your location. Snap encourages users to only share their location with family and close friends.
Image credit: Snap
Alongside the new location-sharing update, Snapchat is expanding on the in-app pop-up warning first introduced in 2023 that appears when you add a friend who doesn't share any mutual friends or isn't in your contacts. The update adds another pop-up message to alert users if they receive a chat from someone who's been blocked or reported by another user, or from a region where a teen's friend network doesn't typically exist. The feature will be first available in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Nordics and parts of Europe at launch.
Another new friend-making safeguard will block friend requests from teens who send or receive requests from people they don't share mutual friends with and who have a history of accessing Snapchat in scam-prone locations. This is in addition to a previous feature that restricted teens from receiving friend suggestions for accounts through Quick Add or search unless they have multiple mutual connections. The new feature is currently available in select countries and will launch soon in India in a more localized form, the company said.
Image credit: Snap
“Our latest safety features are designed to support true friendships, empower teens to make smart choices, and ensure all Snapchatters feel safe and confident when using our app,” Uttara Ganesh, Snap's head of public policy for South Asia, said in a statement.
Snapchat is hugely popular among teenagers — more than 20 million people use the app in the United States alone, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January — but the app, like other social media platforms, is often criticized for not doing enough to protect underage users.
In 2022, Snap introduced Family Center to allow parents to monitor teens' activity on the platform, launched in response to regulatory pressure the social network faces to protect minors. But Spiegel said in comments to Sen. Alex Padilla in January that only about 200,000 parents use the parental controls.