When Snapchat first launched, it was well-known among my friend group that this was the app you could use without the so-called digital footprint our teachers warned us about. We'd take funny pictures of our friends falling asleep on the bus and send them to each other, confident they'd disappear.
But things got scary fast. Some of my friends were , contacted by strangers, and exposed to content way beyond our age. Snapchat's public stories feature made it easy to stumble onto graphic videos. I still remember watching plastic surgeon Dr. Michael Salzhauer, known as Dr. Miami, inject fat into women's bare bottoms -- the person's privates often covered by nothing more than a bloody rag. The app's bright yellow design and cartoon ghost might have looked harmless to parents, but to us it was a sort of secret hub.
Since then, Snapchat has faced scrutiny for being unsafe for kids, like other social media apps. A Snap-sponsored survey found that nearly half of Gen Z say they've been involved with intimate imagery in some way and among 13- to 15-year-olds, about a quarter had been asked to share nude photos. In the U.K., 2024 police data showed that Snapchat was linked to nearly half of all recorded sexual communication with a child offenses where a platform was known.
To address this, the company has rolled out a and safety features. After seeing firsthand how Snapchat was used before those safeguards, I welcome anything that helps. But as a former teen on the platform, I also wonder how effective these tools really are.
Snapchat launched in 2011 as a disappearing-photo app, popular among high schoolers like me and my friends. We would used it constantly, often just for chatting with grey-bar text overlays on random pictures. Posing too hard in each snap was uncool; Snapchat was meant to be unfiltered, that is until filters came out.
Soon after launch, public profiles like Dr. Miami and Taz's Angels grew in popularity. Dr. Miami, an auspicious plastic surgeon with his own practice in Miami, posted graphic videos of his surgeries. Sometimes, after removing an exorbitant amount of skin and fat from someone's body, he would pose with it, similar to a trophy fish.
He had reportedly been banned from Instagram for violating community rules, so his 15-year-old daughter suggested he use Snapchat. There his audience exploded, according to a 2016 interview with Fox. Many of those viewers were high schoolers. Dr. Miami recently posted a meme about his Snapchat rise, and a top comment reads, "Me in school watching a Dr. Miami do a BBL was the peak of Snapchat entertainment."
Taz's Angels, another early Snapchat influencer, featured a group of young woman living with one man, Taz. It was marketed as a Charlie's Angels set up, but the reality was actually closer to on TikTok now. Rumors later tied the group to sex trafficking, which is chilling considering they often used the tagline, "A bad b*tch turns 18 everyday," while recruiting teen viewers.
But it wasn't just graphic or suggestive content. Friends of mine received unwanted explicit snaps from male peers, some were contacted by complete strangers, and many were bullied on the platform.
Snapchat did release a kid-friendly version in 2013 called Snapkidz, meant for kids under 13, but many teens ignored it. My friends and I used regular Snapchat, which kept adding features: geolocation maps, Snapcash, "My Eyes Only" private photo storage. Yet it wasn't until 2022 that the platform introduced for teens.
That year, Snapchat launched the "Family Center" for parents of 13- to 18-year-olds. It lets parents see who their teens are friends with, request their location, report accounts, and more. The company has also tried to limit unsolicited messages for users under 18, preventing teen profiles from being public or widely recommended. And just this month, Snapchat launched "The Keys: A Guide to Digital Safety," a 45-minute online safety program that aims to educate teens on , illicit drug activity, nude and intimate images, and .
I think it's good that Snapchat has taken steps to improve digital safety on their platform. And it's worth remembering that Snapchat wasn't the only platform where things got messy. Ten years ago, several sites, including YouTube and Tumblr, also lacked guardrails and only added meaningful parental controls in recent years.
But despite all the new safety measures, teens and tweens are savvy. Even when I was in high school (and the concept of a digital footprint was still new) kids would roll their eyes during the lectures on internet safety. Today's kids are more aware than ever of what their parents fear, and like job applicants guessing the "right" answer ("Do you consider yourself a hard worker?"), they will likely figure out what parents want to hear, even if they plan to do something else.
So, as a former teen who once sat in the cafeteria watching Dr. Miami stencil a women's nipple on Snapchat, I can say this much: kids will do what they want regardless of new safety features. What makes a bigger difference are the values reinforced at home that will guide their behaviors online. While it doesn't hurt to remind kids how to stay safe online, it takes a lot more than a 45-minute course to build . Much like being healthy in real life, being healthy online requires a lifestyle that prioritizes ongoing conversations, safe spaces, and a bit of grace.