When your teenager is locked on their phone, responding to constant messages and taking a load of selfies of, for instance, half their face and the wall behind them, it’s likely they’re using Snapchat.
We've asked experts, users, and Snapchat themselves, the questions that might help parents - what is Snapchat, how do you use it and how can you help your child get the best out of the app while remaining safe and happy?
What is Snapchat?
Snapchat is a communication service popular among teens, it's used to chat to close friends. Users can take photos, record videos, add text or drawings (called Snaps) and send them to friends. Snaps disappear after being viewed or after 24 hours for stories. This is at the core of Snapchat's design, it encourages spontaneity and casual communication while other social platforms focus on feed-based content and persistent profiles.
Who's using Snapchat?
When we spoke to teenagers, they said it was the main way they speak to their friends and organise their social lives. “When we were younger quite a lot of people didn’t have Snapchat,” says Evie Tarrant, who lives near Bristol and has just turned 18. “We probably would have used WhatsApp more then.” Now, though, WhatsApp is consigned to family group chats, work groups for part-time jobs and A-level project groups. “I think as you get older, everyone has Snapchat,” says Evie.
Like most UK social media, the minimum age required by Snap itself is 13 and if there’s evidence that users are younger than this, Snap says it will delete the account.
Since the law changed in July 2025, platforms have to make children prove their age to protect them from access to the most harmful material such as inciting self-harm, violence and hate speech. “It’s a welcome step in the right direction,” says Ghislaine Bombusa, Content and Digital Director at Internet Matters, an organisation that gives online safety advice. “There’s always going to be a way to circumvent the checks but it will limit the number of underage accounts on there. If you’re registered with the correct birth date the default settings are in proportion to the child’s age.”
Ghislaine encourages parents to ask their children to walk them through how they’re using the platform to understand how it works. Internet Matters have visual guides to help parents through the process of checking privacy settings because, “it can be daunting if you’re a bit of a technophobe or just don’t use the same social media as your children”.
Do Snapchat messages disappear?
There are some features of Snapchat that parents may not have encountered before. “When I’m texting family, I’ll use WhatsApp, but then you have to filter it,” says Grace Hutchings, who’s 17 and attends the same Sixth Form as Evie. “What you say on Snapchat disappears in seconds or after 24 hours, depending on the settings, but on WhatsApp you have all the messages there since the chat began.”
Grace and Evie see the disappearing messages as an advantage because it uses up less storage and they don’t have to scroll through endless old messages to find the important ones. “On Snapchat if you've saved a picture it will stay there, but the messages like ‘when are we meeting up?’ just disappear because you don't necessarily need them,” says Evie.
As a parent, it could be important to know that messages or disappear. If your teen reacts loudly to a message and then says they can’t show it to you, it’s probably because they really can’t retrieve a message, not because they’re hiding anything from you.
Do you need a phone number for Snapchat?
“It's easier to talk to people on Snapchat because they just kind of pop up. You don't need to know their phone number,” says Evie. This functionality could ring alarm bells for parents but Evie and Grace are not worried about it.
“You get your – so if you’re friends with someone on Snapchat and they’re friends with someone, they get recommended to you,” says Evie. “A random person could add you and send you a message but unless you decided to accept it, you’d only see a name, and you could just not interact at all – they couldn’t send you a picture or a voice note.”
Snap were keen to point out to us that if young people of 13-17 register with Snapchat, there are some aspects of the functionality that are tailored to be extra safe. The Family Centre is a feature of Snapchat that lets parents share some aspects of their teenager’s account, so they can see who they’ve been talking to but can’t read the actual conversations.
there are some things you wouldn’t share in a classroom, so don’t do that in a group chat." Ghislaine Bombusa - Internet Matters
“Everything that Snapchat have done with the Family Centre is another step in the right direction,” says Ghislaine. “However, I think parents need to see Family Centre as a supporting platform for conversations. It’s a good way for parents to engage with their children directly on the platform and understand who they’re talking to but the controls are not complete.”
“For example, there’s an AI chatbot on Snapchat that you can either set to be ON or OFF, but you can’t see how children are engaging with it. We’ve recently released some research on AI chatbots and we can see that some children use them to have conversations and ask for advice, and that can cause problems. It will help parents to have those conversations around how to use platforms safely and who to trust for advice.”
Ghislaine says the good thing about having parents on Snapchat is they can start to navigate with their children. "You may have to push yourself to learn how it works, but then you’re armed with knowledge and will be able to give better advice to your children. Even if you don’t understand all of the features, many of them relate to common sense offline. So, you wouldn’t talk to somebody you don’t know in real life, so don’t do that online; there are some things you wouldn’t share in a classroom, so don’t do that in a group chat.”
You can find a really comprehensive guide to how to check and reset the privacy settings for Snapchat on the Internet Matters website. It covers setting up the Family Centre, knowing how to report users, and how to manage location settings.
How Snapchat's location function works?
Snapchat has a location function called Snap Map, where you can see where your friends have been and where Snapchat was last used. This raised concerns with some parents we spoke to, worried that strangers could use it to track their children, but by default, the location settings are turned off for all Snapchatters – not only those under 18. If you decide to turn them on, it’s only friends who can see your location, and you can choose to share it with only a select number of them.
Evie explains, “If your location's on, you can see when someone was last online or what their location was when they last looked at Snapchat. Sometimes you have to turn it off if you go out with friends, because other people can get funny if they're not invited. And if you were online 5 minutes ago, but a message has been left undelivered for 10 minutes, people are like, why haven't you replied?”
“I only have location enabled for my friends. Sometimes I'll turn it on for just for my mum because she likes to look at that,” says Grace. Snapchat recently added a new safety feature called Homesafe, which sends a message to the people you select once you get to a certain location. Parents might find this a useful way to know their teenager has arrived at a place of safety, without the teen needing to remember to send a message, for example, if they’re staying over at a friend’s house after a night out.
To freeze your location on Snapchat, you can turn it off using the Ghost Mode settings in Snap Map or by going on your device settings.
Can you see saved messages on Snapchat?
The disappearing messages on Snapchat can pose some etiquette problems which might explain your teenager being stressed out over their phone. “On Snapchat you get a notification if someone screenshots your message or if they screen record the chat,” says Grace. “It will say Grace has sent you a chat and then if you want to see it but not open it you have to half-swipe it.”
is a way of carefully reading the message without the sender knowing you have read it. This buys you some time to craft a reply without the sender thinking you’re ignoring them. And if you want to share a snap with friends for advice on how to reply, they’ve found a workaround for the technology. “It’s complicated,” laughs Grace, “but you can screen record, half swipe, go off the chat and when you're in the screen recorder you can screenshot the bit where it shows the message and then send it to your friends.”
we need to talk to children about how they address people online, not only because that’s the right way to behave, but also because there will often be a record, and it could catch up with them.” - Ghislaine Bombusa - Internet Matters,
“I would probably usually just copy it out from memory because I'm too scared that they'll see that I've screen recorded it,” adds Evie.
Ghislaine points out that teens could be tempted be less careful about what messages are sent, if the perception is that they will never be seen again. “Of course teenagers have worked out ways to save messages, and it’s important that teens speak to each other online as kindly and politely as they would in real life. That’s where parents come in – we need to talk to children about how they address people online, not only because that’s the right way to behave, but also because there will often be a record, and it could catch up with them.”
What are streaks on Snapchat?
“You can have with people,” Evie explains. “It’s how many days you've sent a snap to each other. It's quite nice, because it allows you to stay in contact with people that you might not speak to every day.”
“People can get quite obsessive with it as well,” warns Grace. “Like they would just be watching telly and replying to every single snap, sending a picture of the wall or their finger or whatever. I don't think it happens as much now we’re in Sixth Form, but in Year 11, if you were going away where you wouldn’t have internet, people would give you their login to do their snaps so they wouldn’t lose their streak.”
For parents, it could be helpful to understand that losing a snap streak breaks some important social expectations, particularly for younger teens, so when the internet goes down or there’s a power cut, some of their distress may come from being unable to keep these bonds going.
“Losing a streak can be a real source of anxiety for teenagers and it feels like it can break friendships, especially for young teens,” agrees Ghislaine. “I would advise parents to be sympathetic and talk to their child about how they feel when this happens. Perhaps encourage your teen to broach the subject with their friends when they first get the platform, to agree that neither of them needs the pressure of keeping a number of days to prove their friendship is strong.”
What does the green dot on Snapchat mean?
According to Snapchat, the green dot shows up on a friend's avatar to indicate that they've been active on Snapchat recently, and will show up unless they disable it. This feature means Snapchat users can see if their friends have been active on the app recently. Knowing this can sometimes feed into the worries Evie and Grace have already mentioned about being ignored or 'left on read' - meaning you know someone has read, but hasn't replied to your message.
For more information:
The Internet Matters independent guide to setting up parental controls, managing notifications and how reporting tools work on Snapchat is here.
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