More than one million UK Snapchatters have now been confirmed as over 18 through our rollout of highly effective age assurance (HEAA). This is an important step in our work to provide safer, more age-appropriate experiences on Snapchat, and we’ll continue extending these protections across our UK community. 

Age assurance is not new to Snapchat. Around the world, we use a range of signals and safeguards to help us understand the age of our community and provide age-appropriate experiences. This includes age signals from app stores and operating systems where available, age estimation systems, user reporting, proactive detection, human review, and age verification when needed.

This summer, following our discussions with Ofcom, we accelerated our work to implement HEAA using methods Ofcom has identified as capable of meeting its standard under the UK Online Safety Act. The UK is the first market where we are implementing this enhanced approach.

What this means for UK Snapchatters

Our approach to age assurance is designed to make the process as simple as possible for UK Snapchatters, while asking for additional verification only where needed.

Age assurance raises important questions about privacy. We’ve long believed that safety and privacy are inseparable, and that strengthening one should not come at the expense of the other.

In practice, that means minimising the data involved at every stage and limiting what Snap receives. For many UK Snapchatters, age assurance can happen securely in the background, without requiring them to take any additional action. Where we can reliably determine that someone is over 18 using a verified email address or phone number, our verification provider receives that information and Snap receives only a binary result. Snap does not see the underlying data used to make that assessment. Email addresses, phone numbers, and verification results are retained in line with our Privacy Policy.

Where we cannot determine someone’s age with sufficient confidence, we may ask Snapchatters to complete an additional Ofcom-approved age assurance method. 

We believe the most effective and privacy-preserving approach to age assurance is at the operating system, app store, or device level, where people can establish their age once and share an appropriate age signal with the services they choose to use. We continue to advocate for Apple, Google, and other providers to make these signals broadly available.

But we are not waiting for an industry-wide solution. We are continuing to strengthen the age-assurance systems available to us today and to extend highly effective age assurance across our UK community.

Building safety into Snapchat

Age assurance helps us provide the right experience for someone’s age, but it is only one layer of protection. Protecting our community requires multiple, overlapping safeguards working together.

Snapchat was designed to help people feel closer to their friends and family through visual, private and personal communication. Helping people feel safe is fundamental to fostering those connections, which is why safety and privacy have been built into our approach to product development from the beginning.

For teens in particular, our goal is to make it harder for strangers and bad actors to find and contact them, while preserving their ability to communicate with people they know in real life. That requires protections that work together across friending, messaging, group chats, content, age assurance and parental tools.

Keeping friendship in your control

Unlike many communication platforms where someone with your phone number, email address, or username can immediately contact you, Snapchat is built around mutual connection. Snapchatters generally need to accept a friend request, or already have one another in their phone contacts, before they can begin communicating directly in a 1:1 conversation.

We also don't offer public friend lists. Personal connections are part of an individual's experience on Snapchat, not a public directory of who they know. And friendship on Snapchat is always a choice: Snapchatters can remove or block someone at any time, preventing further direct communication.

We use signals such as mutual friendships, existing phone contacts and broader network patterns to help Snapchatters find people they are likely to know while reducing the likelihood of unwanted connections. For teens, we put additional guardrails in place to further strengthen these protections.

Warnings when something doesn't look right

We also use a range of signals to identify connections that may pose a higher risk and warn Snapchatters when appropriate.

UK teens may receive an in-app warning when we have reason to believe they may not know someone attempting to connect with them or when other signals indicate potential risk. We continue to strengthen the signals that inform these warnings, including reports associated with an account or device, few mutual friends, and geographic or other contextual signals that may be associated with patterns of financially motivated scam activity.

Our systems can also consider whether a device has previously been associated with an account that received reports for potentially violating our Community Guidelines. Looking at these signals together can help identify patterns that may not be apparent from an individual account alone and better distinguish between legitimate connections and those that may pose a higher risk.

Considering these signals together can help our systems identify patterns that may not be apparent when looking at an individual account alone and better distinguish between legitimate connections and those that may pose a higher risk. We continuously test and refine these systems as threats evolve.

These warnings encourage teens to pause and consider whether they know and trust the person before connecting, while reminding them of the tools available to block or report an account.

We are also rolling out a notice for UK Snapchatters under 18 when they join a group chat that includes someone who is not their Snapchat friend. The notice makes clear that some participants are not friends and gives the Snapchatter the choice to open the chat, go back, or learn more.

For more information about these controls, including how to mute, remove, or block a contact and report a concern, see our Tips for Teens guide.

AI-powered safety systems and human review

Technology also helps us identify potential risks earlier and at scale. We use automated tools, including machine-learning and AI-powered systems, to identify content and account signals that may indicate harmful activity and bad actors. 

We can then use these signals to identify higher-risk accounts and strengthen protections across friending features, making it harder for potentially bad actors to find and connect with teens.

On public surfaces, these systems help identify prohibited or age-inappropriate content, including sexually suggestive material, dangerous activity and other harmful content before it can be recommended. We also use automated language-scanning tools on certain public surfaces to identify explicit statements indicating that a user may be under 13.

These signals are considered alongside reports from Snapchatters, parents, educators and other members of the public as part of our broader review and enforcement systems.

AI can strengthen this work, but it does not replace human judgment. Our teams evaluate, test and refine these systems, and trained safety professionals review reports and take action where appropriate.

Tools for parents and families

Parents and caregivers also have an important role in helping teens navigate the online world. Our goal is to give families practical tools and information while respecting teens’ privacy.

Family Center gives parents and caregivers insight into their teen's Snapchat experience and additional controls without revealing the content of private conversations. Parents can see who their teen is friends with and communicating with, view their declared age, apply content controls, restrict My AI, and report concerns directly to Snap.

In the UK, we also offer The Keys, an interactive safety education programme developed with input from Childnet. It helps teens and families understand risks they may encounter online, including bullying, intimate imagery, illicit drugs, and sexual extortion, and provides practical guidance on how to respond.

A continuing commitment

Online safety is never finished. Technology changes, risks evolve and bad actors adapt. Our responsibility is to continue adapting as well.

Confirming more than one million UK Snapchatters as over 18 through highly effective age assurance is an important step in that work, but it is not an endpoint. We will continue extending this approach across our UK community, strengthening protections for teens, investing in enforcement, and providing parents and families with practical tools and information.

We will also continue working constructively with Ofcom, safety experts, families and young people as we refine our approach. Helping people communicate with their real friends has always been at the heart of Snapchat. As online risks evolve, we will keep strengthening the safety and privacy protections that help make those connections possible.