What a 13-Year-Old Sees on Snapchat in a Normal Week

Welcome to Parent Pixels, a parenting newsletter filled with practical advice, news, and resources to support you and your kids in the digital age. This week:

• More than half of social media child safety features aren't working as advertised, according to a new report. 
• What does a 13-year-old actually see on Snapchat in a normal week? The answer is disturbing.
• New in the BrightCanary app: custom concerning content alerts!

Digital parenting

🔒 More than half of social media safety features aren’t working: Researchers at the Cybersafety Research Center tested 86 child safety features across TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube (aka, the apps your child is likely to use) and evaluated whether children could realistically find and use them. Only 35 of those features passed both tests. That’s just over 40%, which, if we’re taking things back to grade school, isn’t exactly passing. The features failed because they were buried in settings and hard to find and/or didn’t actually work the way they claimed. A few couldn’t be triggered at all, even when researchers actively tried. 

• On Instagram, comments between teen accounts that included bullying language, including phrases like “nobody likes you,” didn’t trigger a prompt to rethink the comment. Instagram clarified that the feature doesn’t activate when users follow each other (which seems like a design flaw to us because peers can still bully peers, even if they’re mutuals).
• On a TikTok test account registered to a minor, searches for disordered eating content led to suggested search terms like “how to pretend to eat your food” and “razor blade skin.” 
• On Snapchat, an adult test account was able to find and message a child account with no restrictions, even though that literally isn’t supposed to happen. 

Speaking of Snapchat: Two new reports led by Brooke Istook, President of the Heat Initiative, specifically examined the risks Snapchat can pose to children and adolescents. The reports — which included a survey of 1,000 adolescents ages 10–17 and the findings from two Snapchat accounts registered as 13-year-olds — found the following:

• One in three young people reported encountering unsafe content or messages on Snapchat weekly or more. 
• 36% of kids reported unwanted content from strangers.
• When kids encountered problematic content, only 39% told someone they trusted.

On the test accounts, across 12 combined hours of use, Snapchat recommended a combined 256 drug and alcohol-related videos, 244 sexual videos, 53 self-harm and suicide videos. To put that in perspective, that’s roughly one drug and alcohol-related video every three minutes of use. 

What the platforms are saying: In response to the Heat Initiative reports, Snap published a detailed rebuttal, stating that the test accounts didn’t represent the typical teen experience. Platforms also pushed back on the Cybersafety Research Center’s report, stating that the findings were based on “intentionally taking actions to bypass protections that are not representative of the typical user experience.” (Our counterpoint to that: kids will intentionally try to bypass those protections, so why aren’t they working?)

Meanwhile, Meta is appealing the landmark social media ruling that found the company guilty of contributing to a woman’s mental health struggles and social media addiction. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Big Tech companies say their features work, but independent researchers keep finding they don’t. And for parents, the gap between what’s advertised and what’s real is exactly the space where harm happens. 

That’s why it’s essential to stay involved. Check in with your child about not only what they see, but also how they feel and what they’ll do if they encounter a bully, or content that makes them uncomfortable, or a stranger in their messages. It’s why thousands of parents believe in BrightCanary, which monitors content across every app your child uses and sends you an alert if it detects anything concerning. It’s one of the most effective ways to stay informed about what your child is saying online, even on platforms designed to make that difficult. 

Parent Pixels is a biweekly newsletter filled with practical advice, news, and resources to support you and your kids in the digital age. Want this newsletter delivered to your inbox a day early? Subscribe here.

Tech talks

Believe it or not, we’re rapidly approaching back-to-school season. That means new schedules, new pressures, and more time balancing screen time with school. Before the school year gets away from you, here are five conversations worth having now. 

1. “What would you say takes up most of your time online? How do you feel about that?”
2. “Social media and school drama can get tricky. If something happened online that made school harder, you can always talk to me about it. What would make that easier?”
3. “Last year, I noticed your sleep/focus/mood were affected when you were on your phone late. Let’s try keeping phones out of the bedroom this year. How about an 8 p.m. cutoff time?”
4. “If something ever happens online that makes you uncomfortable, you can come to me about it. Even if it feels small, you can always check in with me. Does that sound good?”
5. “I want to talk about private social media accounts. Here’s why they’re important, and why I don’t want you to have a public account. Let me know what you think about that.”

What's catching our eye

🆕 New in BrightCanary: custom concerning content alerts! You can now set your own custom alert categories. To check it out in the app today, go to More > Settings > Manage Family, and then tap “Content Settings.”

📋 The KIDS Act passed the House. The bipartisan Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act cleared the House with broad support. The legislation would require new safety features and parental controls, restrict minors' data for targeted advertising, mandate age verification for adult content sites, and establish new rules for AI chatbots and online games. It now faces an uncertain path in the Senate, where a similar bill has previously stalled.

📬 Back to school is coming fast. What digital parenting topic is on your mind as the new year approaches? Reply and let us know — we may cover it in a future issue.

Related posts:

Meta Announces New Content Restrictions for Teens Teens See Mental Health as Their Top Challenge, Survey Says What Parents Should Know About Their Kids and Group Chats Online Safety Legislation Gains Supporters, But Future Is Still Uncertain