We Created Two Snapchat Accounts. It was Disturbing

Details↓

Back in June, the Heat Initiative, an online safety advocacy group, posted a report on “The Hidden Dangers of Snapchat for Kids.” With parental involvement, it surveyed 1,016 minors who used Snapchat in the latter half of 2025.

You can dig into it yourself, but three takeaways we gleaned from the report:

• “Over half of 10-17-year-old users encountered unsafe content or messages while using Snapchat.”

• “90% of unwanted messages minor users received were from strangers” and many suspected nearly half of those were from adults.

• Of those unwanted messages a quarter “contained sexual imagery or language” or requested “a nude or sexually suggestive photo or video of yourself.”

A week following the Heat Initiative’s public report, Snapchat posted a new safety update for minor accounts where content “is visible only to their mutually accepted friends” while stating “At Snapchat, nothing is more important than enabling all members of our community to express themselves authentically and in a setting grounded in real friendship, safety, and privacy.”

Commentary↓

With Snapchat’s supposed new commitment to safety in mind, Jill and I signed up for two accounts to see what the experience was like. The sign-up process only required a first name, birthdate, and email address (or phone number). There was no age verification. The accounts were set up as a 40 year old adult and 15 year old teen with male names.

Snapchat has long been touted as a messaging app, but in recent years they’ve added public short video feeds called Discover and Spotlight to compete with Instagram and TikTok. Discover is curated content while nearly anyone can post to Spotlight. We’re not even addressing the problematic disappearing messages feature. Our goal was simply to see what content would pop up in less than one minute in the Spotlight feed for both new accounts. With a cold start, what videos would the algorithm send our way?

Both accounts had mundane content like travel, dance, pets, and sports, but over 50% of the initial feed for the adult account was filled with non-explicit, yet sexually suggestive content from other adults. The very first video was a pole dancer, and some of the content included simulated sex acts.

The Spotlight feed of the teen account was far more disturbing. In under one minute of swiping, 25% of the feed from our tiny experiment was sexually suggestive content created and posted… by minors.

This isn’t unique to Snapchat. Many news outlets have conducted real-world tests on TikTok and Instagram, and the companies say these aren’t accurate depictions of the experience… that the algorithm learns and tailors a user’s feed to their interests and that there are safety features for minor accounts to keep them from unsafe content.

There’s some truth to that, but tech companies often leave out the fact that:

1. Getting to that truly tailored feed from a cold start (where the algorithm doesn’t know your likes/interests) requires users to sift through a barrage of edge content, that is, borderline content that is highly engaging including, but not limited to, sexually suggestive or provocative posts.

2. Their definition of unsafe content might be more permissive than yours. As the saying goes: Sex sells… as does sexually suggestive content.

For those who have followed our journey since the beginning, you’ll remember that when we tried to secure our brand handle on our X account, our feed was entirely filled with porn accounts. It took an image/video filter and 30 minutes of clicking on news and tech sites to train the algorithm to focus on porn-free tech news.

To the parents out there, maybe you just want to take our word, or the Heat Initiative’s word, or Texas’ word for it, but we would challenge you to try an account for less than one minute. We’re willing to bet that the Spotlight experiment alone might quickly settle any indecision on whether or not your kids or teens should use Snapchat.

Postscript↓

Jill and I are beta-testing LIVE webinars of Module 1 of Driver’s Training for the Online World the second Thursday of each month starting August 13th at 7pm (CST).

We’ll go through each lesson in Module 1 together in 60 minutes... the video, quiz, discussion questions, thought experiments, and action ideas.

The webinars are initially exclusive to our new online community on the registered side of our main website. If you already have access to all or part of Driver’s Training for the Online World, you’ll now also see “Behind the Curtains Online Community (Free Preview)” in your content library.

Click on “Access Now”, click on “Ride Along Webinars” to find a date that works for you, and RSVP to claim a spot for you and/or your family! If you don’t see it in your library sign up for free by clicking here or message/email if you have questions.