Are teenagers still using Snapchat?
The teenagers that made the bulk of its users when it was new are in their late 20s now.
The teenagers that made the bulk of its users when it was new are in their late 20s now.
(I have 14 & 16 year olds, neither of whom have social media. It really is unpleasant for them sometimes, trying to keep up with JIT event logistics carried out on Snap.)
It'd be very limiting not to allow your child to have access to things like Snapchat when all their peers have it and are using it to communicate on a daily basis.
That's just a silly example that doesn't even get into the posting of risky behaviors, using inappropriate language, bullying or whatever else. I do not believe kids grok all this innately and it's important for parents (and teachers and coaches and other adult influences in their lives) to educate them.
We also spot check our kids' phones periodically. Not because we don't trust them, but because it's important to know sometimes whether there are issues afoot that we aren't privy to and could help with. (Disappearing messages is another parental challenge with Snap.). This might sound overbearing and intrusive, but I don't believe it is. Our 16yo has mostly graduated from us feeling a need to check his comms, but we still monitor our 14yo a couple times a week because she's less forthcoming about goings on in her friend group.
Fwiw, it's not like we don't trust our kids to make good decisions themselves. We have added both as authorized users to one of our credit cards, which they have access to via Google Wallet. In all things like this, clear communications and expectation setting between parents & children is the most important, no matter what you decide -- or whether your decisions change over time (or are dependent on the child's own behavior/decisions).
My daughter (8th grade) and her friend group seem to be fine using group chats for comms, and although a lot of her friends do have Instagram & Tiktok (not so much Snap in middle school), she hasn't expressed interest.
That said, we are ok with them to have Instagram accounts specifically for athletics purposes. My son is a 4:20 miler as a sophomore and my daughter plays for a top regional club soccer team. Both have aspirations to compete collegiately. It's valuable these days to cultivate a social presence, just like it can be valuable for working professionals to maintain a LinkedIn profile. But they are clear -- and we are clear with them -- that these social accounts are for "business" purposes, not for socialization, and they understand. We've been beating the drum about the risks of social media for years and they see inappropriate and out of control use by some of their peers, so I generally feel pretty comfortable.
The biggest hazard with Snapchat as the comms channel for high schoolers is that it creates an almost constant string of intrusive push notifications, especially if your network is sufficiently large (like an entire high school class year). For easily distractible kids it can be insufferable.