Sunday is World Kindness Day, a day dedicated to education and inspiring people to choose kindness – in real life and online. At Snap, kindness is one of our core values, and it is on display daily. Extending and exhibiting kindness go hand-in-hand with safety as well, because so many online safety issues can stem from displays of inconsiderate or harsh behavior.

Findings from new Snap research show that three-quarters of Generation Z respondents reported being exposed to at least one online risk over a three-month period earlier this year. More than two-thirds of teens (68%) and 83% of young adults said they personally had fallen victim to some digital risk. About one in five (19%) teens cited that risk as online bullying or harassment, and that percentage was higher for young adults at 22%. Other personal risks for both age demographics included exposure to hate speech and various sexual risks.  

“Cyberbullying is corroding the online world,” said Nicholas Carlisle, CEO of Power of Zero, a non-profit that works closely with Snap and is launching a global program to teach online kindness from an early age. “It causes some to quit, others to escalate their online speech, and it stands in the way of the original promises of the internet of connection, collaboration and creativity. The antidote is for each of us to make a relentless commitment to kindness in our online speech and to use the tools that our social media platforms provide for blocking, reporting and getting help.”

Combating bullying and harassment

Bullying is something no one should have to experience, either in person or online. Snapchat’s Community Guidelines clearly and explicitly prohibit bullying, intimidation, and harassment of any kind. We don’t want it on the platform; it’s not in keeping with why Snapchat was created and designed. If someone is experiencing or witnessing a possible violation of our policies, including bullying or harassment, we encourage them to report it to us right away. 

We have in-app reporting tools where people can report specific Snaps (photos or videos) and accounts. Snapchatters can simply press and hold on a piece of content to report it to us or complete this online form at our Support Site. The form can be submitted by anyone, regardless of whether they have a Snapchat account. (Learn more about how reporting on Snapchat works here.) Reports are reviewed and actioned by Snap’s Trust and Safety teams, which operate 24/7. Enforcement might include warning the offender, suspending the account, or terminating the account entirely.

There’s also the ability to block or remove an offender by pressing and holding on the person’s name until a menu appears, including the heading “Manage Friendship.” At that dropdown, the Report, Block and Remove Friend options appear in red. We, of course, advise leaving any group chat where bullying or any unwelcome behavior might be taking place and reporting it to Snap immediately. Telling us about abusive or harmful content and behaviors help to improve the community experience for everyone. 

Parents, caregivers, and other trusted adults connecting with their teens using Snapchat’s new Family Center feature can also report accounts that may be of concern to them – and they can do so directly in the app. Future updates to Family Center will also include the ability for teens to inform their adult guardians that they made a report to Snap.

More research insights

The new Snap research examines various aspects of online life that contribute to overall digital well-being. The study surveyed teens, young adults, and parents of teens aged 13-19 in Australia, France, Germany, India, the UK, and the US between April 22 and May 10, 2022. Their responses accounted for online interactions from roughly February through April.   

A total of 9,003 individuals participated in this research, and full results* will be released in conjunction with international Safer Internet Day 2023 on February 7. We are sharing select findings on World Kindness Day, however, to encourage more empathetic and respectful interactions on Snapchat and across social media. 

We look forward to sharing the full results, including our first Digital Well-Being Index for each country and across all six, early next year. 

Until then, Happy World Kindness Day and let’s aim to embrace kindness not just on November 13 but throughout the year. 

- Jacqueline Beauchere, Snap Global Head of Platform Safety

* The sample size for teens and young people was 6,002, including 4,654 who identified as using Snapchat. A total of 6,087 respondents identified as being users of Snapchat (including parents). Questions did not focus on users of any one social media platform in particular and instead asked about online interactions generally. 

Today, we are pleased to help launch an unprecedented public awareness campaign with the Ad Council, also funded by YouTube, to help educate young people about the dangers of counterfeit pills and illicit drugs laced with fentanyl.

Drug overdose-related deaths have skyrocketed in recent years, with 2021 seeing a 52 percent increase over the previous two years. Based on research from Morning Consult that we commissioned last year to better understand young people’s awareness of fentanyl, not only did we find that young people were significantly unaware of the extraordinary dangers of fentanyl, but it also brought to light the strong correlation between the larger mental health crisis and the increased abuse of prescription drugs. As a platform many young people use to communicate with their friends, we are committed to helping protect our community, and we believe we have a unique opportunity to inform Snapchatters about the deadly reality of fentanyl-laced pills. While we have been focused on doing our part to raise awareness and educate Snapchatters on our app, we also believe a holistic approach is needed. That’s why we worked with the Ad Council over the past year to build support for this important educational campaign, and we’re pleased to be launching this effort with the Ad Council and our industry partners. 

The campaign, Real Deal on Fentanyl, aims to educate young people living in the U.S. on the dangers of fentanyl and its prevalence in counterfeit prescription pills and illicit drugs. In the new public service ads, viewers will hear from former drug dealers as they teach high school students about the fentanyl crisis as part of their regular class subjects. Shatterproof, a national nonprofit dedicated to reversing the addiction crisis in the U.S., served as an advisor to the campaign production. Song for Charlie, a national family-run nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness about 'fentapills' — fake pills made of fentanyl, is also serving in an advisory capacity, alongside a panel of public health organizations and experts, to provide key insights and data and ensure all aspects of these initiatives are accurately and medically informed. You can read more about the campaign and access additional resources and social graphics here.

As part of this effort, Snapchat will also launch a series of new Augmented Reality Lenses, Filters, Stickers, and content that amplify the campaign's messages across our platform, which will also be available on our in-app drug educational portal, Heads Up. Additionally, Snap is providing $1 million in ad credits to the Ad Council and working with a group of Snap Stars to help spread the word with our community.

This campaign builds on the work we have been doing over the past 18 months to help combat the fentanyl epidemic, in close collaboration with parents, experts in counternarcotics and specifically the fentanyl crisis, and law enforcement organizations. Together, we have developed new in-app tools and content to directly raise awareness with Snapchatters about the dangers of fentanyl and launched Family Center, our in-app parental tool that gives parents insight into who their teens are communicating with on Snapchat. We have also dramatically improved our efforts to proactively detect and remove drug dealers who try to exploit Snapchat and increased our support for law enforcement investigations to bring these dealers to justice. You can read a recent update on our ongoing progress here.

While we believe this public awareness campaign is an important step in helping to educate young people and offer them important resources, we know there is still more work to be done. We will continue to prioritize the health and well-being of our community, work to develop more safeguards to help protect Snapchatters on our platform, and work with governments and technology and public health sectors on this urgent national crisis.

Next week, Snap will be launching an unprecedented public awareness campaign with the Ad Council to help educate both parents and young people on the dangers of counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl. Last year, fentanyl became one of the leading causes of death for adults in the U.S. ages 18-45 – and we know young people are especially at risk. That’s why we worked with the Ad Council for more than a year to collaborate on this effort, bringing together Snap, YouTube, and other industry partners on this critical issue.

This campaign will build on work we have been doing over the past 18 months to help raise awareness of the dangers of fentanyl directly on our platform, through video campaigns, original content, and resources from expert organizations. During this time, we have worked vigorously to improve our efforts to proactively detect and remove drug dealers who try to exploit Snapchat and increased our support for law enforcement investigations to bring these dealers to justice. We have been committed to providing regular updates about our progress and, ahead of next week’s campaign launch, we are sharing the latest overview of our ongoing work to combat this national epidemic. 

• Strengthening our proactive detection: We continue to strengthen our AI and machine learning tools that help us proactively detect dangerous drug activity on Snapchat. Our most advanced models are now helping us​ to​ proactively identify approximately 90% of illicit drug activity before a Snapchatter has the opportunity to report it to us, and we are continuing to see a decrease in the number of drug-related reports from Snapchatters. In September 2021, over 23% of drug-related reports from Snapchatters contained content specifically related to sales; as a result of proactive detection work, we have driven that down to 3.3% as of last month. We will keep working to get this number as low as possible.

• Working across platforms to find drug dealers: Knowing that drug dealers operate across a range of social media and communications platforms, we also work with experts to find illicit drug-related content across these other platforms that references Snapchat, so we can find drug dealers’ Snapchat accounts and shut them down. When we find drug dealers using Snapchat, we not only ban their accounts but we take active steps to block them from creating new ones. We are also continuing our partnership with Meta to share patterns and signals of illicit drug-related content and activity, and we hope other platforms will join the effort.

• Growing our support for law enforcement: Even as we faced economic headwinds over the last year, we continued to grow our law enforcement team that supports these investigations, with many team members joining us from careers as prosecutors and law enforcement officials with experience in youth safety. These investments have helped us continue to strengthen our support for fulfilling law enforcement requests for information, which we prioritize based on urgency. In the case of emergency disclosure requests – which involve imminent threat to life and can include a fentanyl incident – our 24/7 team usually responds within 30 minutes. We have also continued to improve our response times for requests that don’t involve an imminent threat to life.

• Launching new parental tools: We recently introduced Family Center, our first in-app parental tool that enables parents to see a list of all of the people their teens are communicating with on Snapchat. If a parent sees a concerning or unfamiliar account, including one they suspect is involved in drug-related activity, they can easily and confidentially report it to our Trust and Safety teams. We hope these tools will help empower parents to initiate important conversations with their teens about online safety and the importance of knowing who they are in contact with. You can read more about Family Center, including how to sign up, here.

• Streamlining our reporting process: We updated our in-app reporting process to reduce the number of steps and add more reporting categories, including a category for drugs, so Snapchatters can report harmful content or accounts more quickly and accurately. Additionally, ​as part of our ongoing focus on improving our transparency reports that we publish twice a year, we recently started breaking out drugs into its own category so we can provide additional detail about our enforcement efforts. 

• Providing extra safeguards for teens: While we want Snapchat to be safe for everyone, we have additional protections in place to make it harder for teens to be contacted by people they don’t know. By default, Snapchatters under 18 have to be mutual friends before they can start communicating with each other. Teens can only show up as a suggested friend to another user if they have multiple friends in common, and we don’t allow them to have public profiles. 

• Raising awareness directly with Snapchatters: We block search results for drug keywords and slang; if Snapchatters search for those keywords, we instead direct them to content about the dangers of fentanyl created by expert partners through our dedicated in-app portal, called “Heads Up.” Over the past year, we have continued to add new resources from leading organizations such as Song for Charlie, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA), Truth Initiative, and the SAFE Project. Since the launch of Heads Up, over 2.5 million Snapchatters have been proactively served content from these organizations. Our news show, Good Luck America, which is featured on our Discover content platform, has also dedicated a special series to educate Snapchatters about fentanyl that has been viewed over 900,000 times. 

• Evolving our Safety Advisory Board: We recently rebuilt our Safety Advisory Board (SAB), with the goal of adding members who represent the many geographies of our global community, safety-related disciplines, and areas of expertise. Our new Board now includes experts in online risks, including lethal drugs, along with parents and survivors. The new board will advise us on a wide range of issues and will meet for the first time later this month. You can read more about our new SAB here.

As the Ad Council campaign gets underway, we will continue to work with expert organizations to develop additional resources for parents about the fentanyl epidemic, the root causes of it, and what to look out for. And we remain deeply committed to building on both our operational and educational work to fight this crisis, both on Snapchat and across the tech industry. 

Earlier this year, Snap announced that we would rebuild our Safety Advisory Board (SAB) with the aim of growing and expanding membership to include a diversity of geographies, safety-related disciplines and areas of expertise. In doing so, we launched an application process, inviting experts and individuals from around the world to formally express their interest in providing guidance and direction to Snap on all things safety. 

We received dozens of applications from individuals and experts across the globe that we evaluated via an objective, multistep process, which culminated in executive-level approval of our selection committee’s recommended slate. We thank everyone who applied for their willingness to support and work with Snap on these critical issues, and we are humbled by that outpouring of interest and commitment. 

Today, we are pleased to announce our Advisory Board is growing to 18 members, based in 9 countries and representing 11 different geographies and regions. The new Board is made up of 15 professionals from traditional online safety-focused non-profits and related organizations, as well as technologists, academics, researchers, and survivors of online harms. Members are experts in combating significant online safety risks, like child sexual exploitation and abuse and lethal drugs, and have broad experience across a range of safety-related disciplines. In addition, we will be joined by 3 Board members who are young adults and youth advocates. We selected these applicants to ensure the Board has ready-access to the all-important “youth voice” and viewpoint; to make certain a portion of the Board includes committed Snapchat users; and to seek to balance professional views with practical perspectives from a core demographic of the Snapchat community. 

The following individuals comprise Snap’s new Safety Advisory Board:

• Alex Holmes, deputy CEO, The Diana Award, UK

• Amanda Third, professorial research fellow, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, Australia

• Castra Pierre, young adult, member of USAID’s Digital Youth Council, Haiti 

• Ed Ternan, president, Song for Charlie, U.S. 

• Hany Farid, professor of computer science, University of California, Berkeley, U.S.

• Jacob Sedesse, young adult, student and part-time tech journalist, U.S.

• James Carroll, Jr., former director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, U.S.

• Janice Richardson, international advisor on children’s rights and digital citizenship, Insight2Act, based in The Netherlands and focused on Europe and North Africa

• Justine Atlan, director general, eEnfance, France

• Jutta Croll, chair of the board, Stiftung Digitale Chancen (Digital Opportunities Foundation), Germany 

• Lina Nealon, director of corporate and strategic initiatives, National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), U.S. 

• Lucy Thomas, CEO and co-founder, PROJECT ROCKIT, Australia

• Maria Loodberg, expert advisor, Friends/World Anti-Bullying Forum, Sweden

• Michael Rich, pediatrician, founder and director Digital Wellness Lab & Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, U.S.

• Okulaja, rapper, content creator, youth advocate, UK 

• Sudhir Venkatesh, professor, Columbia University, U.S. 

• Victoria Baines, professor of IT, Gresham College, UK

• Yuhyun Park, founder and CEO, DQ Institute, Singapore

“Thanks to technology, we are more connected than ever, and Snap has played a key role in fostering that social interaction,” said Jim Carroll, former White House “Drug Czar” and current principal at Michael Best Advisors. “I am honored to assist Snap in its work as part of their Advisory Board, working to ensure this ever-evolving digital landscape is a positive and safe place for their global community to continue to grow.”

From Hany Farid, professor of computer science, University of California, Berkeley: “In the U.S., 13 is the average age a child joins social media. It will be another decade before a child’s prefrontal cortex is fully developed. As we do in the offline world, we have a responsibility to protect children participating in this massive online experiment. I am encouraged by how seriously Snap is taking the risks social media poses to children, and I’m excited to join their remarkable team to ensure that their (and everyone’s) services are safe for our youngest and most vulnerable citizens.”

“Snapchat is how my teen patients talk to each other; it is their language,” said Michael Rich, pediatrician, founder and director, Digital Wellness Lab & Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School. “I am encouraged by Snap’s foresight to seek evidence-based advice on how the physical, mental, and social health of youth are affected in positive and negative ways by how they communicate on visual social media.”

The new Board will meet for the first time this month and then three times in a given calendar year. Our inaugural meeting will include an overview of Snapchat’s new Family Center, as well as a preview of our contribution to international Safer Internet Day 2023 on February 7. Board members are not compensated for their time, but Snap does have the ability to support an organization’s programs and initiatives that align with Snap’s objectives. 

We want everyone who applied to know that being a part of Snap’s Safety Advisory Board is by no means the only way to engage with us on safety issues. Similar to how we developed our new parent and caregiver tool, Family Center, we plan to call on our advisory board members, as well as other experts and advocates around the world to share feedback and views on safety-related policies, product features, and other initiatives. We look forward to building on this progress, continuing to foster safety on Snapchat, and supporting teens and young people who want to connect with their friends, create, and have fun!

- Jacqueline Beauchere, Snap Global Head of Platform Safety

At Snap, the health and well-being of our community is our top priority. As young people around the world struggle with their mental health, we have both a responsibility and a meaningful opportunity to support Snapchatters by maintaining a safe space for them to communicate with their friends and giving them access to vital resources.

From the start, Snapchat was designed to help real friends communicate and have fun together without the pressure of likes and comments – avoiding the most toxic features of traditional social media that encourage social comparison and can be hard on mental health. We know connections between friends are also a critical form of support for young people dealing with mental health issues — friends are usually the first port of call when they are struggling. As a platform built for communications between real friends, that's where we are especially — and uniquely — positioned to help and can play a powerful role in preventing bullying, educating our community on how they can respond to bullying, and offering resources they can use when they or a friend are in need.

This World Mental Health Day, we are launching a suite of new bullying prevention and mental health campaigns across the globe. Through partnerships with local expert organizations, these campaigns will encourage Snapchatters to be kind to one another and provide them with local tools they can lean on if dealing with bullying or mental health struggles.

One main way we support the mental health of Snapchatters is through our in-app portal called “Here For You.” Launched in 2020, Here For You provides proactive in-app support to Snapchatters who may be experiencing a mental health or emotional crisis by surfacing resources from expert organizations to Snapchatters when they search for a range of mental health-related topics. Today, we are announcing expansions of Here For You around the globe:

• Content that raises awareness about the new 9-8-8 suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. 

• Partnered with 3114 in France on a new episode focused on raising awareness of the national suicide prevention hotline. 

• Rolling out Here for You in Germany and partnering with ich bin alles to develop custom video content that covers topics including depression, stress, and more.

• New content in the Netherlands developed with Stichting 113 Zelfmoordpreventie (Suicide Prevention) spreading awareness about their suicide hotline and MIND focusing on how to handle bullying.

• New content in partnership with headspace National Youth Mental Health Foundation and ReachOut in Australia covering topics like being a good friend, tackling stress, and maintaining a healthy headspace. 

• Joining forces with Sangath to bring a suite of new content to India, covering a range of mental health topics including coping with anxiety, dealing with depression, and supporting a friend dealing with suicidal thoughts. 

• Launching Here for You in Saudi Arabia in partnership with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology providing tips for how to respond to bullying.  

• Introducing our second class of Club Unity in the U.S. and partnering with the Ad Council’s “Seize the Awkward” campaign on a national Lens and Filter that encourages Snapchatters to talk to their friends about mental health.

In addition to expanding Here For You and updating Club Unity, we are working with trusted local partners to spread awareness to our community about on-the-ground support and resources through national Filters, Lenses, and Stickers:

• In Canada, we are teaming up with Kids Help Phone to promote their mental health resources through a Lens and Filter, and encouraging Snapchatters to seek help when in need. 

• Partnered with 3114 in France on a national filter to raise awareness of the national suicide prevention hotline through a Filter. We will also be partnering with E-Enfance on a bullying prevention campaign that highlights their digital wellbeing hotline.

• In Germany, we are also working on a Lens with ich bin alles that provides tips on how to help a friend who may be struggling with their mental health. 

• In the Netherlands, we are working with 113 on a Lens to share critical resources with those who may be experiencing suicidal thoughts. 

• In Norway, we are supporting the national mental health awareness campaign, Verdensdagen for Psykisk Helse, with a Lens and Filter, and partnering with Mental Helse to promote the national mental health hotline with a Filter. 

• Partnering with PROJECT ROCKIT in Australia to help give Snapchatters tactics for responding to bullying with a Lens, Filter, and Stickers. 

We want everyone who uses Snapchat to have a safe and positive experience. As a platform designed to help real friends communicate in an authentic way, we are proud to be a tool Snapchatters can use to connect with one another and access life-saving resources in support of their mental health. We recognize there is always more to be done, and we will continue working to build upon these new tools, resources, and partnerships to support Snapchatters in need and the overall well-being of our community.

Teens and young people across much of the world are heading back to school and, with the global pandemic largely behind us, it appears they will be re-entering the classroom and interacting with friends and classmates with some consistency — both in-person and online. So, this seems like the right time to remind families and teens to stay alert to online risks, to continue embracing sound online habits and practices, and to reach out if anything on Snapchat makes you feel unsafe or uncomfortable.

Promoting safer and healthier experiences on Snapchat is a top priority for us at Snap, and nothing is more important than the security and well-being of our community. Better understanding the attitudes and behaviors of Snapchatters and those who use more traditional social media platforms is a critical part of this. 

Earlier this year, we conducted new research into various aspects of online life that contribute to overall digital well-being. We polled a total of 9,003 individuals, specifically teens (aged 13-17), young adults (aged 18-24), and parents of teens aged 13-19 in six countries (Australia, France, Germany, India, UK, and the U.S.) about five dimensions of digital well-being. Details* and full results, including our first Digital Well-Being Index for each country and across all six collectively, will be released in conjunction with international Safer Internet Day 2023 in February. We are, however, sharing some preliminary findings in the back-to-school timeframe and as our new Family Center tools for parents and caregivers continue to roll out across the globe – all in an effort to remind families about the importance of staying safe.

Assessing online risks

To help determine whether teens and young adults are flourishing online, struggling, or something in between, it’s necessary to understand their degree of risk exposure. Not surprisingly, our research confirms that when online risks become more personal, exposure has a negative effect on digital well-being. 

Various forms of online bullying and harassment, including teasing, name-calling, purposeful embarrassment and “flaming,” all negatively impacted young people’s digital well-being, according to our study. The same can be said for encountering sexual and self-harm-related online risks like sexual solicitation or having thoughts of suicide or self-harm.     

What may be surprising, however, is the apparent “normalization” of other online risks among teens and young adults. Impersonating others online, spreading false or misleading information, and being exposed to unwanted or unwelcome contact are just a few risk-types that have weak correlations with digital well-being, according to the research. Perhaps even more concerning is young people’s responses. Nearly two-thirds of respondents (64%) said they ignore or brush off bad behavior online – as opposed to reporting it to the relevant platform or service. They say such behavior is “no big deal” and chalk it up to someone “just expressing an opinion.” Couple that with more than another quarter (27%), on average, that said bad actors are unlikely to face serious consequences, and 9 out of 10 respondents in this research shared a number of apathetic reasons for not reporting policy-violating conduct to online platforms and services. 

Importance of reporting

Indifference toward reporting remains a recurring theme across technology platforms, but we need to turn that tide and encourage teens and families to tell us when people may share content or behave in a way that violates our Community Guidelines. It’s not only the right thing to do, but it’s a way of taking an active stance in helping to protect fellow Snapchatters. Indeed, reporting abusive or harmful content and behavior – so that we can address it – helps improve the community experience for everyone. 

Snapchatters can report in-app by simply pressing and holding on a piece of content or by filling out this webform at our Support Site. (Check out this reporting Fact Sheet to learn more.) Parents and caregivers who are using our new Family Center tools currently available in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, and the U.S., can also report accounts that may be of concern – and they can do so directly in the app. Family Center will be available in other international markets in the coming weeks, and additional updates to Family Center are planned for later this year. This will include the ability for teens to inform their parent or caregiver that they have made a report to Snapchat.

We look forward to sharing more results from our digital well-being research in the months leading up to – and on – Safer Internet Day 2023, February 7. In the meantime, here’s to heading back to school with online safety and digital well-being top of mind!

- Jacqueline Beauchere, Snap Global Head of Platform Safety

*The sample size for teens and young people was 6,002, including 4,654, who identified as using Snapchat.  A total of 6,087 respondents identified as being users of Snapchat (including parents). Questions did not focus on any one social media platform in particular and instead asked about online interactions generally.

With the midterm elections approaching in the United States, we wanted to highlight our longstanding approach to preventing the spread of false information on Snapchat, and the steps we continue to take to build on our strong foundation of preventing the spread of false information on our platform. 

Our efforts have always started with the architecture of our platform. With Snapchat, we wanted to build something different to capture the spontaneity and fun of real-life conversations. From the beginning, we’ve built safety and privacy into the fundamental design of our platform. That’s why Snapchat opens directly to a camera, instead of a feed of content, and is focused on connecting people who are already friends in real life. We have always wanted Snapchatters to be able to express themselves and have fun with their friends — without the pressure to grow a following, gain views, or earn likes. Snapchat reflects how we normally communicate face to face, or on the phone, because digital communication on Snapchat deletes by default. Across Snapchat, we limit the ability for unmoderated content to reach a large audience. We do this by holding amplified content to a higher standard to make sure that it complies with our content guidelines. While Snapchat has evolved over the years, we have always tried to build technology that enables creativity and prioritizes the safety, privacy, and well-being of our community.

In addition to our foundational architecture, there are a number of key policies that that help us to prevent the spread of false information on Snapchat: 

• Our policies have long prohibited the spread of false information. Both our Community Guidelines, which apply equally to all Snapchatters, and our content guidelines, which apply to our Discover partners, prohibit spreading false information that can cause harm — including, for example, conspiracy theories, denying the existence of tragic events, unsubstantiated medical claims, or undermining the integrity of civic processes. This includes sharing media that is manipulated to be misleading about real-life events (including harmful deepfakes or shallow-fakes).

• Our approach to enforcing against content that includes false information is straightforward: we remove it. When we find content that violates our guidelines, our policy is to take it down, which immediately reduces the risk of it being shared more widely. 

• Across our app, we don’t allow unvetted content the opportunity to ‘go viral.’ Snapchat does not offer an open newsfeed where people or publishers can broadcast false information. Our Discover platform features content from vetted media publishers, and our Spotlight platform is proactively moderated before content is eligible to reach a large audience. We offer Group Chats, which are limited in size, are not recommended by algorithms, and are not publicly discoverable on our platform if you are not a member of that Group.

• We use human review processes to fact-check all political and advocacy ads. All political ads, including election-related ads and issue advocacy ads, must include a transparent “paid for” message that discloses the sponsoring organization, and we provide access to information about all ads that pass our review in our Political Ads Library. In connection with U.S. elections, we partner with the nonpartisan Poynter Institute to independently fact-check political ad statements. In addition, to help mitigate the risks of foreign interference in elections, we prohibit the purchase of political ads from outside the country in which the ad will run.

• We are committed to increasing transparency into our efforts to combat false information. Our most recent Transparency Report, which covered the second half of 2021, included several new elements, including data about our efforts to enforce against false information globally. During this period, we took action against 14,613 pieces of content and accounts for violations of our policies on false information — and we plan to provide more detailed breakdowns of these violations in our future reports. 

To build on this, ahead of the midterm elections, we have also established dedicated internal processes for information-sharing and for monitoring the effectiveness of our policies and other harm mitigation efforts, ensuring we can calibrate our approach as needed. We are also engaging actively with researchers, NGOs, and other stakeholders from across the election integrity, democracy, and information integrity communities to ensure our safeguards are responsibly anchored in the wider context of emerging trends and informed by expert perspectives.

We’re also focused on partnering with experts to promote greater information integrity. Through our Discover content platform, we focus on providing credible and accurate news coverage to our community, from publishers like The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, VICE, and NBC News.

We’ve also developed an expansive array of in-app resources to connect users with civic information, including about opportunities to register to vote, or even run for local office. 

Doing our part to promote a responsible information environment remains a major priority across our company, and we will continue to explore innovative approaches to reach Snapchatters where they are, while strengthening our efforts to protect Snapchat from the risks of viral false information. 

At Snap, we believe that our products should reflect real-life human behaviors, and how people act and relate to each other in their everyday lives. We’ve made it a point to build things differently from the beginning, with a focus on helping Snapchatters communicate with their close friends in an environment that prioritizes their safety, privacy, and wellbeing. 

That’s why Snapchat opens directly to a Camera, not a feed of endless content, and is focused on connecting people who are already friends in real life. We have always wanted Snapchatters to be able to genuinely express themselves and have fun with their friends in the same way they would if they were hanging out in person—without the pressure to grow a following, gain views, or earn likes. 

Creating a safe and positive experience for them is critical to this mission. While we want our platform to be safe for all members of our community, we have extra protections in place for teenagers. For example, on Snapchat: 

• By default, teens have to be mutual friends before they can start communicating with each other. 

• Friend lists are private, and we don’t allow teens to have public profiles. 

• And we have protections in place to make it harder for strangers to find teens. For example, teens only show up as a "suggested friend" or in search results in limited instances, like if they have mutual friends in common.

Today, Snapchat is a central communications tool for young people, and as our community continues to grow, we know parents and caregivers want additional ways to help keep their teens safe. 

That’s why we’re introducing a new in-app tool called Family Center, which will help parents get more insight into who their teens are friends with on Snapchat, and who they have been communicating with, without revealing any of the substance of those conversations. 

Family Center is designed to reflect the way that parents engage with their teens in the real world, where parents usually know who their teens are friends with and when they are hanging out – but don’t eavesdrop on their private conversations. In the coming weeks, we will add a new feature that will allow parents to easily view new friends their teens have added.

On Family Center, parents can also easily and confidentially report any accounts that may be concerning directly to our Trust and Safety teams, which work around the clock to help keep Snapchatters safe. We’re also equipping parents and teens with new resources to help them have constructive and open conversations about online safety.

To help develop Family Center, we worked with families to understand the needs of both parents and teens, knowing that everyone’s approach to parenting and privacy is different. We also consulted with experts in online safety and wellbeing to incorporate their feedback and insights. Our goal was to create a set of tools designed to reflect the dynamics of real-world relationships and foster collaboration and trust between parents and teens. Learn more about how to get started with Family Center by watching this explainer video:

This fall, we plan on adding additional features to Family Center, including new content controls for parents and the ability for teens to notify their parents when they report an account or a piece of content to us. While we closely moderate and curate both our content and entertainment platforms, and don’t allow unvetted content to reach a large audience on Snapchat, we know each family has different views on what content is appropriate for their teens and want to give them the option to make those personal decisions. 

Our goal is to help empower parents and teens in a way that still protects a teenager’s autonomy and privacy. We look forward to continuing to work closely with families and online safety experts to keep improving Family Center over time. To learn more about Family Center and about how we’re working to keep teens safe on Snapchat, check out this Parent’s Guide to Snapchat.

-- Team Snap

Last year, as part of our ongoing efforts to understand young people’s awareness of the dangers of fentanyl and the broader epidemic of counterfeit pills, we conducted a survey of young Americans and found that nearly half (46%) rated their average stress level as 7 out of 10 or above. Nearly 9 in 10 (86%) of respondents agreed that people their age feel overwhelmed.

By now, it is well understood and documented that the U.S. is facing a significant mental health crisis among young people. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2021, 37% of high schoolers reported poor mental health, while 44% reported they persistently felt sad or hopeless during the past year. 

This era of extraordinary challenges to emotional well-being has contributed to an epidemic of young people, including teenagers, turning to illicit prescription drugs as a coping mechanism. Tragically, drug cartels are preying on young people’s search for coping mechanisms, flooding the country with cheap, counterfeit prescription pills that are frequently poisoned with fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that is 50-100 times more potent than morphine. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, over 40% of illicit pills tested contained potentially lethal levels of fentanyl. 

Studies show prescription drug abuse is the fastest growing form of drug abuse among teens, with as many as one in six teenagers reporting using prescription drugs to alter their moods or other purposes. Across the nation, scores of Americans, including a growing number of young Americans, are dying from fentanyl after taking what they believed were safer, legitimate prescription pills.

According to our own study, about 15% of those aged 13-24 have abused prescription medicines, one in five have thought about doing so, and 40% know someone who has done so. Eighty-four % say coping with anxiety and stress is the reason they and their peers are turning to pills.

At Snap, we have always had a zero-tolerance policy against using our platform in connection with illicit drug sales, and have focused on combating the fentanyl epidemic in three key ways: by constantly improving our technologies for proactively detecting this content and shutting down drug dealers who abuse our platform; by strengthening our support for law enforcement; and by partnering with expert organizations to educate Snapchatters directly in our app about the horrific dangers of fentanyl. You can learn more about our strategy in previous public updates here and here. 

It’s been a year since we launched the first steps of our ongoing in-app public awareness campaign and we wanted to provide an overview of continuing work to address this crisis from every angle:  

• We have engaged former heads of federal drug enforcement agencies to advise us on these efforts, and work closely with experts in counternarcotics, the law enforcement community, organizations focused on raising awareness of fentanyl and counterfeit pills, and parents. 

• To further strengthen our support for law enforcement investigations, we have heavily invested in growing our own law enforcement operations team by 74% over the last year, with many of these new team members joining from careers as prosecutors and law enforcement officials with experience in youth safety. Last October, we held our first annual Law Enforcement Summit, with more than 1,700 law enforcement officials from federal, state and local agencies participating. 

• We are investing heavily in AI and machine learning tools to proactively detect dangerous drug activity on Snapchat, and work with experts to find illicit drug-related content across other platforms that references Snapchat, so we can find drug dealers’ accounts and take swift action to shut them down. As a result, our detection volumes have increased by more than 25% since the beginning of the year, and 90% of identified violating illicit drug content is proactively detected before any Snapchatter has the opportunity to report it.

• When we find illicit drug dealers using our platform, we promptly ban their accounts, and take steps to block them from creating new ones. We cooperate with law enforcement investigations, including by preserving and disclosing data in response to valid legal requests. 

• We block search results on Snapchat for drug keywords and slang, and instead show educational content from experts about the dangers of fentanyl through an in-app portal called Heads Up. Our partners include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA), Truth Initiative, and the SAFE Project. Since the launch of Heads Up, over 2.5 million Snapchatters have been proactively served content from these organizations. 

• We have also added new measures to limit Snapchatters under 18 from showing up in search results or as a friend suggestion to someone else unless they have friends in common. This builds on protections we’ve long had in place that require teens to be friends with another Snapchatter in order to communicate directly.

• We have launched several series of video advertising campaigns in our app to educate Snapchatters about fentanyl. Our first, launched last summer in partnership with Song for Charlie, was viewed over 260 million times on Snapchat. Last month, as part of National Fentanyl Awareness Day, we ran another set of in-app public service announcements, a national Lens, and filter that were viewed nearly 60 million times. 

• Our in-house news show, Good Luck America, which is promoted on our content platform in Snapchat and is also available in Heads Up, has been covering the fentanyl crisis for more than a year through a special dedicated series, which has been viewed by more than 900,000 Snapchatters to date. 

• As part of our larger strategy, we’re also committed to working with other platforms. We recently began a pilot program with Meta in which we are sharing patterns and signals of illicit drug-related content and activity. This signal-sharing program allows both platforms to bolster our proactive detection efforts in finding and removing illicit drug content and dealer accounts. We look forward to continuing this collaboration, with the goal of having other platforms join us as we work across industry to help combat the growing fentanyl epidemic. 

• Last month, we announced that we’re teaming up with the Ad Council and other tech platforms, including Google and Meta, on an unprecedented public awareness campaign that will launch this summer to help both young people and parents learn more about the dangers of fentanyl. Learn more about this new campaign here.

• As an app built for communicating with real friends, who are a critical support system for each other when dealing with mental health challenges, we continue to expand our in-app tools and resources on a range of mental health topics – a long-term and ongoing priority for us. (Learn more here and here). 

• Additionally, we’re developing new in-app tools for parents and caregivers to give them more insight into who their teens are talking to on Snapchat, while still respecting Snapchatters’ privacy. We plan to roll these new features out in the coming months.

Taken together, we believe these measures are making Snapchat an increasingly hostile environment for drug dealers and we will continue to examine how we can keep meaningfully improving our efforts, knowing dealers will always look for ways to evade our systems. 

We also recognize that this issue goes far beyond Snapchat. Ultimately, the solution to this epidemic lies in a nationwide effort to address the root causes of this crisis, including the conditions that create such profound mental health challenges for young people. We will keep working with and listening to our community on this critical topic. Our long-term goal as a society must be nothing less than a world in which far fewer young people experience mental health challenges and those that do have equitable access to appropriate services and care, rather than feeling they must turn to illicit drugs. This will require a coordinated effort between government, law enforcement, the technology sector, health care services and more, and we are committed to doing everything we can to help support this goal. 

Over the past year and a half, Snap has been deeply focused on doing our part to help combat the broader national fentanyl crisis, which has continued to intensify during the pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that over 100,000 people died due to drug overdose in the 12-month period ending November 2021. And according to a recent study published in JAMA, 77% of adolescent overdose deaths in 2021 involved fentanyl. 

At Snap, we have taken a holistic approach to eradicating drug dealers from our platform, strengthening our support for law enforcement investigations, and educating Snapchatters about the dangers of counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl. Our work has involved working closely with parents, expert organizations, and law enforcement to continue to learn how we can keep strengthening these efforts.

To help inform our in-app education efforts, last year we commissioned research from Morning Consult to better understand young people’s awareness of fentanyl, and why they are increasingly turning to prescription pills. Our research not only found that young people were significantly unaware of the extraordinary dangers of fentanyl and how pervasive it is in counterfeit prescription pills, but it brought to light the strong correlation between the larger mental health crisis and the increased use of prescription drugs. Teenagers are suffering from high levels of stress and anxiety, and as a result are experimenting with non-medical, abuse of prescription drugs as a coping strategy. 

Through all of our ongoing work, it has become clear that a larger, industry-wide approach is needed to help educate both young people and parents about the dangers of fentanyl. 

Today we’re grateful to be collaborating with the Ad Council on an unprecedented public awareness campaign launching this summer to help Americans learn about the dangers of fentanyl. Snap, along with Meta and Google, will be funding this effort. With the help of additional media partners, we will also be donating media space and developing and distributing content designed to educate both young adults and parents on this growing fentanyl crisis. 

Additionally, we’re sharing updates on our continued work to crack down on drug-related activity by improving our underlying technology to better detect drug-related content, while continuing to increase public awareness through key partnerships and in-app educational resources. 

Since our last public update in January, we have put even stronger machine learning models in place for automatically detecting drug-related text, images, and emojis. As of March 2022, more than 90% of the dangerous drug-related content that we proactively detected using these tools has been removed within minutes.

We’re also expanding our educational resources for Snapchatters by: 

• Welcoming new partners like SAFE Project founded by Admiral James and Mary Winnefeld – working to combat the nation's catastrophic addiction epidemic  – to Heads Up, our in-app portal that distributes expert resources to Snapchatters who search for a range of drug-related search terms and slang. Since the launch of Heads Up, over 2.5 million Snapchatters have been proactively served educational content from trusted expert organizations like Song for Charlie, Shatterproof, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) and Truth Initiative.

• Expanding our partnership with CADCA by collaborating with their National Advisory Youth Council to develop Heads Up resources specifically geared towards substance misuse, community engagement, and prevention advocacy.  

• Teaming up with the Partnership to End Addiction – the nation’s leading organization dedicated to addiction prevention, treatment, and recovery – to develop a guide focused on educating parents and caregivers about the dangers of fentanyl, and provide tips for how to discuss the risks with their teens. This will be available in English and Spanish on the Partnership to End Addiction’s resource page and on Snap’s Safety Center. 

• As part of our ongoing special Good Luck America series focused on the fentanyl crisis, in the coming weeks we will release our next episode featuring an interview with Dr. Rahul Gupta, the Director of National Drug Control Policy at the White House, to help Snapchatters understand the drug-overdose epidemic and its impact on young Americans. 

In addition to these new tools and resources, we are also updating our in-app reporting flow to make it even easier for Snapchatters to report harmful content – that way, we can act even faster to protect our community. We’re doing this by reducing the number of steps it takes to submit a report, providing detailed definitions of each reporting category so it’s clear what our corresponding policies are, increasing the number of reporting categories so there’s more specificity around the type of abuse that’s taking place and closing the feedback loop by letting Snapchatters know what take we take on their reports.

In the upcoming months, we will also be rolling out our new parental tools, with the goal of giving parents more insight into who their teens are talking to on Snapchat, while still respecting the teen’s privacy. 

Additional Efforts to Support our Community’s Mental Health and Wellbeing 

With Mental Health Awareness Month underway, we are also announcing a slate of new partners and launching creative and educational tools to help Snapchatters look after their mental health and wellbeing, and to support their friends. We believe this is especially important given the strong correlation between mental health and young people self-medicating. These efforts include: 

• Participating as a partner in the White House’s first-ever Mental Health Youth Action Forum alongside leading mental health non-profits in an effort to empower young people to drive action on mental health. 

• Serving as a Founding Partner of Mental Health Action Day. In an effort to remind Snapchatters to take care of their own wellbeing, we will launch a new augmented reality (AR) Lens that encourages Snapchatters to take a wellness break and participate in a breathing exercise. 

• In addition, we’re adding new partners to Here for You, our in-app mental health portal, including The Jed Foundation, The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Movember, and the National Alliance for Eating Disorders.

As we roll out these additional resources, we continue to prioritize the mental health and wellbeing of our community every day. As an app built to help people communicate with their real-life friends – who we know are critical support systems for those experiencing mental health challenges – we will continue to develop innovative tools and resources to help Snapchatters to stay healthy and safe.