3 gaps left after Snapchat Find Friends goes off for kids

That's the share of recorded UK police offences involving sexual communication with a child, where the platform was known, that took place on Snapchat, according to a 2025 analysis of police data by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).Against that backdrop, Ofcom's latest announcement carries weight.Snapchat has started deactivating the Find Friends feature for child users in Britain.

The feature proposes new friends, so disabling it prevents strangers from contacting the child’s account.

It has also been confirmed that adult strangers will not be able to contact children by default and children will not be prompted to connect with strangers.This means that the child’s account will automatically be protected from strangers without any action taken by the child himself.The minimum age requirement of Snapchat is 13 years.

However, in May, Ofcom stated that 32 percent of children in Britain between the ages of 8 to 12 use Snapchat.

In case a child lied about his age while registering on Snapchat, a default for “child users” would never apply to him.That gap is why age checks matter more than any single setting.

Snapchat has told Ofcom that effective age checks for under-18s should be in place by the end of the year.The reports say that the feature is still available to Snapchat users in other countries.

Children in other parts of the world don't have the same default at the moment.However, Ofcom has not declared this a success yet either.

The online safety director at the agency referred to the move as something that had taken a long time to happen.Ofcom stated that those organisations that did not address grooming concerns faced being fined 10% of their total qualified revenues.

In case of companies worth billions, that would be a strong motivation.

3 gaps left after Snapchat Find Friends goes off for kids November 7, 2026.