07/29/2023
SNAPCHAT: Does your child use Snapchat? It's a popular app teenagers use for creating multimedia messages referred to as "snaps" that consist of a photo or a short video, and can be edited to include filters and effects, text captions, and drawings. While the premise behind the app seems innocent, it can lead to problems if used inappropriately. Ahead of the start of school on Thursday, Decatur City Schools wants to educate our parents and public about protecting our students that use Snapchat.
Snapchat offers extra protections for 13-to-17-year-olds, including requiring teens to be mutually connected or in their respective phone contacts before they can start communicating.
Please follow the links below to learn more about tools parents can access to learn more about Snapchat safety:
➡️Snap has a set of in-app parental tools called Family Center. The goal of these tools is to help parents get insight into how their teens are using Snapchat, including who they are communicating with and what public content they are viewing. https://values.snap.com/safety/family-center
➡️Easily report concerning accounts to Snap’s 24/7 Trust and Safety team. You can learn more here: https://values.snap.com/safety/safety-reporting
➡️Here is a list of important actions to help protect your teens on Snapchat.
❗️FAMILY AND FRIENDS ONLY: Tell your teen to only invite and accept Friends on Snapchat if they are friends in real life or family members. Encourage them to check their Friends List regularly to make sure they still want to be in touch with each friend.
❗️LOCATION AND PRIVACY SETTINGS: Talk to your teen about their location and privacy settings. At Snapchat, privacy settings are turned on by default, so people can only see the things you want to share, for as long as you want to share them.
❗️IN-APP REPORTING: Make sure your teen knows how to use our in-app reporting tools and that we don’t tell Snapchatters who reported them. These reports go directly to our 24/7 Trust and Safety team to investigate and take appropriate action. We also offer reporting tools on our website for those who don’t use Snapchat – which any parent can easily use.
❗️THINK BEFORE YOU SEND: Remind your teen that, as with sharing anything online, it’s important to be really careful about sending anyone – even a partner or close friend – personal or sensitive images and information. Snaps and Chats may delete by default, but there are ways to capture images from a phone or other device without a person’s consent. This is true despite Snapchat sending a notification in some instances when a screenshot is taken.
❗️JOIN FAMILY CENTER: Make sure you and your teen are signed up for Snapchat’s Family Center.
