Snapchat has taken the world by storm, there isn’t a person who has access to a smartphone who doesn’t know in some capacity what Snapchat is. But, what is Snapchat really? Snapchat is a multimedia messaging app developed by Snap Inc., originally launched in 2011. It's known for its unique approach to communication, emphasising short-lived content and instant, casual interaction. While Snapchat offers a fun and engaging platform for communication, its design and features present several concerns for children and young users. At Zeeko, we make it a priority to speak to parents and teachers in Ireland to truly understand all aspects of the effects of social media on children and students. We recently spoke to a father of two boys about his experience navigating parental life in a world saturated by social media.
Background: This interviewee is the father of two boys now aged 14 and 17. Digital device restrictions are imposed in their household. Time spent on their phones is limited to 1.5 hours a day and family content filters are used where possible on apps especially on YouTube. Like all households the most common issue around restrictions is hounding for more time on their devices.  We asked if these children used digital devices or the internet for their homework.  “Yes, they use digital devices to do their homework, they are encouraged by the school and teachers to use the internet for their homework when they don’t necessarily need to. The Internet is only a tool that should be used if learning something such as coding or building a small website and not for looking up answers, that can be found in school books that parents have to buy for their kids alongside that."
Experiences: We asked this father if he had any real life experiences where it really highlighted to him that social media was an issue in the younger generations. His experiences were as follows; “I bought 4-5 kids the same age as my son to a basketball tournament, teams traveled from all over the EU to this. I noticed that the Irish kids were the worst mannered when it came to smartphones. No one really spoke to each other; they all had their heads in their phones. They appeared to not be as friendly and not present at the moment due to the dependency on screen time. One child on the drive there in the car flicked through 3 hours of Instagram shorts continuously. Not engaging with any other friends. The content that this child was consuming was not age appropriate, scrolling through the likes of Andrew Tate & anti-women content.” Andrew Tate is controversial social media figure and former kickboxer, has gotten significant attention for his content, which is often described as promoting hyper-masculinity, wealth, and a traditionalist view of gender roles. His influence, particularly on younger audiences, has raised concerns due to the nature of his messaging. The messages he sends around on social media are more often than not centered around toxic masculinity, gender stereotypes, objectification of women and many more. Parents should be aware that this type of content exists on the internet and can be very harmful to impressionable ears.  We asked if he had any firsthand experience with social media trends that integrated their way into the household. He gave us this example: “Social media trends are often extremely inappropriate content and often are not understood by the child fully. A few years back while watching the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, on announcing the winner, who was female, one of my sons (now 14, 10 at the time) came out and said ‘Smash’. This is in reference to the recent ‘Smash or Pass?’ trend online. Users would make videos of people and reference smash if they found them attractive and pass if they didn’t think they were up to par. It left me wondering why and how a child of this age would be able to put into context what this trend really means and how they became aware of it. Answer: social media trends reinforced by algorithms.”
Social media trends are extremely tricky to navigate. When these trends take off on social media and in the race to go viral, some young people will use these viral trends and sounds in their videos without fully understanding what they mean or are referring to. These trends often spill over into the classroom where they are made into the norm, like the ‘Smash or Pass?’ trend. We asked if this father knew of any other trends through his kids social media, he had heard of the ‘One Margarita’ trend. This song rose to popularity on TikTok with people of all ages using the song on their videos and making up dances to it, often provocative and not appropriate for young people. If these trends are influencing the conversations that our children have, by allowing children to have smartphones and access to this content, are we potentially changing the nature of who our children are meant to be when they grow up?   The interview continued and we began to speak about porn and inappropriate content online. We asked if his sons had an experience with porn online yet, his response was as follows; “Yes I have had this conversation with my oldest son. During this conversation he confessed to stumbling upon the inappropriate content while on Soccer 808 and clicking a link, innocently and landing on a porn website.”
Let’s Circle Back Now that we have set the scene of how our interview with this parent began, the bulk of this interview was about Snapchat and this household's experience with the app. This parent reported that they are strict on Snapchat. When one of their sons was in Transition Year, he was asked to leave his phone with his parent, this story followed; “On observing my son's phone between midnight and 1am in the morning, over 20 messages and friend requests came through on the Snapchat app. As once a snapchat message is opened you can’t see it again, I could only look at the messages that came through while I had the phone. I was shocked to see that the content that I was seeing on my son's phone was images of young girls wearing provocative clothing and posing in what could only be described as stripper poses. The caption on these messages was ‘any pics’. These girls were no more than 15 years old. My mind was blown and one of the most concerning thoughts I had was that, my son is underage, these girls sending these pictures are underage and I am responsible for my son's phone, how do I navigate this situation and protect my son. My first step was to take away the phone. I confiscated the phone and massive restrictions were put in place around when and how he could use his phone going forward. Most importantly, Snapchat was deleted and he is no longer an user of the app. When tensions calmed, conversations took place to get to grips as to why this sort of behaviour was taking place online at such a young age. We had an open and honest conversation and he admitted to feeling like he was under constant pressure to ‘send nudes’ and part-take in the behaviour. He said it was always a topic of discussion in school, ‘everyone else is doing it’ and there is pressure to do it to fit-in.”
From hearing this we believe social media is like a game for young people, they really don’t understand the severity of what they are doing. Especially with apps like Snapchat there is a false impression that if the snap is deleted afterwards that there is no way of anyone ever seeing that content again. This is completely false, it’s all stored in data centers and can be accessed at any time when required. Not only is the original content stored, with the introduction of AI, scams are ruthless with fake accounts doctoring explicit content and threatening young people that they will share online, in schools and among their peers and claim it’s the young person. The repercussions of this are endless, from increased bullying in schools to the extent that some students have taken their own lives due to the pressure of these claims.  A major concern that this parent highlighted as his son is underage, the phone actually belongs to the parents (you). If someone were to go to snapchat.com and ask for the data from the account under his son's name, review the content, they would most likely hand the parents a prison sentence. Parents are responsible for the interactive, underage and explicit content that their children are receiving and sending.
For this young person, his Dad reported, never being allowed again on Snapchat, was, at first traumatic. No one in their school could understand why they had disappeared off the app. At first there was pressure in explaining why they don’t use the app anymore but as time went on, he began to forget about it completely and reported these specific notes:
  • He felt better, less stress, anxiety and pressure now he is not on the app.
  • He had considered sending pictures and videos and is glad that he didn’t.
  • He feels like he matured more and is a better example for his younger brother.
  • He doesn’t want to, nor feel the need to go back on the app.

This parent spoke to a few other parents to see if they had experienced the same problem, some had and had acted on it in a similar way, others had no idea this was happening, some knew but have lives that are too busy to really delve into what their children are doing online. All cases are pretty understandable and every case is different. He kindly offered some tips for other parents stemming from his experience;

  1. For Snapchat specifically, turn off Snapchat Maps and any Friend Suggestions. For more on how to adjust these settings, click here.
  2. A few months into secondary school, they should have made all their friends, their friend count should remain the same. This is the easiest variable to check.
  3. Set rules and stick to them, the arguments will reduce and it will become the norm.
All this got us thinking Social media is like an addiction for everyone, not just for students and young people. Like any addiction, it starts small and grows. Is the inappropriate content that young people are so exposed to between peers going to lead to more sex and porn addictions as generations progress? Is there any hope for children who have no access to mobile phones yet? What will their experiences be? Is Snapchat and the way it is used by young people the gateway drug to porn addiction? We believe so.  We have listed some interesting research articles below around smartphone addiction on Irish students.
"Smartphone ownership, usage and addiction proneness in preadolescents–implications for quality of life" by D. McGovern (2019) - It investigates smartphone addiction and its impact on Irish children's quality of life. Read more here. "Later is better: mobile phone ownership and child academic development, evidence from a longitudinal study" by S. Dempsey et al. (2019) A longitudinal study that focuses on the academic and mental health effects of mobile phone ownership in children. Read more here.   We want to hear your stories, if you have one you would like to share with us to help our research to help better educate students, families and schools, please email yours to laoise.sheehan@zeeko.ie.