SNAP CHAT – NEW FUNCTION

Snap Chat is a popular app used by many children and young people on their phones.

Recently, Snapchat introduced Snap Map, that allows you to share your location with your friends on a map. Snapchat’s introduction video to Snap Map, focuses on sharing the location of posted Snaps to Our Story, which is public, and could be useful for, say, seeing a collection of Snaps from a particular event.

But what Snapchat doesn’t tell you in the video, or in the app, is that Snap Map will broadcast your exact location to anyone on your friends list every time you open the app.

When you update Snapchat and get to the Snap Map walkthrough, only three screens need to be clicked through to complete it. Though it mentions sharing your location, it’s vague on what that exactly means. Users might not understand that Snap is posting your location on Snap Map every time you open the app. Not just when you share Snaps to Our Story.

Please ensure

• you are aware of what your child is using in their phone
• that the privacy settings are on private
• that you know who is in their group
• whether they have this function on Snap Chat

  If you want to disable Snap Map, select “Ghost Mode” upon Snapchat’s initial walkthrough. If you’ve already enabled location sharing for Snap Map, tap the settings gear in the top right while viewing the Map, and select Ghost Mode from there.

  Please also find the following link to a NWG parents guide to SNAPCHAT.

https://www.nwgnetwork.org/parents-complete-guide-snapchat-dangers-impact-2016/#