With kids heading back to school, Snapchat has announced some new resources to help teachers both understand the platform, and to raise awareness of concerns directly, helping to ensure young users are safe in the app.
Snapchat remains one of the most popular messaging platforms among teens, with its disappearing messages adding assurance that their updates won’t be held against them in perpetuity. It also allows for more risqué and risky sharing between teens, though that inevitably comes with a level of harm too.
In order to curb misuse, and keep teens safe, Snap’s launched a new online guide for educators, which provides insights into a range of overviews of what Snap is, how it works, and its available safety measures.
As explained by Snap:
“Our Educator’s Guide to Snapchat includes an overview of how the platform works, ways Snapchat can be used positively within school communities, and information about our safety tools and Community Guidelines. It also includes new videos highlighting Snap’s features for schools and safeguards for teens, as well as downloadable resources that educators can share with parents, counselors and others to help students handle risks they may face online, including bullying, mental health concerns and sexual harms like sextortion . ”
It’s a handy compilation of various Snap safety tools. You can check out the online guide here.
Snap’s also partnered with Safe and Sound Schools to develop a new practical toolkit for educators.
“Building on insights from teachers, mental health professionals and school resource officers about the impact of digital platforms on school environments, this toolkit was created to provide educators with the knowledge needed to support the safety and wellbeing of their students online, with a specific focus on understanding Snapchat.”
The 29-page guide includes a heap of notes on Snapchat’s safety and reporting measures, as well as the laws and regulations relating to how educators can respond to concerns.
Finally, Snapchat’s also adding a new educator feedback form so that educators can provide direct feedback on concerns.
That’ll add another way to help raise awareness of misuse or issues, by sharing that information directly with Snap.
These are some good safety measures, and as noted, given the popularity of Snapchat among teen users, it makes sense for the platform to provide additional tools to help educators understand the app, and how they can raise their own concerns.
It’ll be interesting to see how Snapchat looks to act on such feedback. If, for example, several respondents were to suggest that sextortion is a major problem, could Snap look to block the sharing of nudes?
There are some measures that would impede on DM privacy, and what people can share. But if it enhances safety, based on ongoing reports, that could be something to consider.
Either way, the new tools will help educators better respond to online harms.
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