Perhaps it wasn’t a terrific concept to let 14-year-olds put up movies to Highlight within the first place.
Snapchat is making one other change meant to additional limit the attain of its youngest customers. The app will not permit younger teenagers to share content material to a publicly viewable model of Highlight, the app’s hub for shortform video content material.
Not like most different elements of Snapchat, movies shared to Highlight are public and might be considered by anybody within the app. So far, Snap allowed customers as younger as 13 to contribute content material to the characteristic, although the app did not hyperlink youthful teenagers’ profiles to their public posts. Now, Snap will not permit anybody between 13 and 15 to contribute to the model of Highlight that is seen to many of the app’s customers.
As a substitute, the app is creating a brand new “profile” characteristic the place youthful teenagers can create shortform content material that is solely seen to their mutual associates within the app. Profiles will even host Tales posts, that are additionally hidden from non-friends for youthful teenagers. In line with Snap, the change is supposed to “encourage creativity and self-expression inside a trusted viewers.” It additionally appears geared towards dialing down the social strain youthful teenagers typically face because it removes metrics like favorites.
Snap, like different social media corporations, has confronted rising scrutiny for its dealing with of teenagers’ security and privateness. The corporate has spent the previous few years beefing up its parental control features and making it tougher for adult strangers to attach with teenagers. The corporate is presently going through quite a few lawsuits over its report on youngster security.
