What Parents Need to Know About Snapchat

This summer I'm doing a series on What Parent's Need to Know about *insert some type of online thing here*... because it's not just parents that need to know these things but teachers too AND if there is one thing we all know it's that online stuff changes so often it's hard to keep up (especially when you aren't even using that app/program)!

Today I'm talking about Snapchat

what you need to know about Snapchat

This is from National Online Safety and you can find it free to download here

Believe it or not Snapchat is not an app that I've used (but is definitely one that I've heard of). Based on what I had heard I wasn't entirely sure what the draw to it is... your pictures disappear after x amount of time and there are filters. Is that really it?

Well, here are my 3 take aways from the poster

1) It records where the picture was taken and it shows up on a map. Yikes. Where are kids using this app? Likely at home, school, or a friends place... do you really want everyone that can view their pictures to know the locations of these places? I wouldn't. But fear not, you can enable ghost mode which should then not display your location on the map.

2) Like many other apps there are restrictions that can be placed on an account to further protect your childs/students privacy. Make sure everything they upload on the app can only be viewed by their friends and turn off the "quick add" feature to ensure they are really truly only adding their friends.

3) And the obvious... pictures "disappear" after x amount of time which may lead children (and adults) into a false sense of security that even though they send that slightly "risque" photo no one will know it was sent after that time frame. The truth is once it's out on the internet it's out there... someone could easily screen shot it and have it forever. To me this is the most frightening thing about the app and it's super important that everyone be aware of this.

Last week I talked about what we need to know about Instagram (which it seems like everyone BUT me has)