“We share the goal of keeping young people safe online and continuously invest in tools, policies, educational resources, and product protections designed to reduce potential harmful interactions on Snapchat. The Heat Initiative is an advocacy organization whose stated mission includes ‘catalyzing’ litigation against technology companies to drive accountability. While advocacy organizations play an important role in raising awareness about online safety issues, we proactively engaged with The Heat Initiative in good faith to share information about our protections because of our common safety interest. Unfortunately, this report does not reflect that dialogue, nor does it provide a balanced or representative assessment of teen safety on Snapchat - it fails to account for the significant investments we have made to help protect our community.

“We caution against drawing sweeping conclusions from a report based on a handful of ‘researcher’-created accounts, rather than a true cold-start experience, and that appears designed to generate alarming headlines rather than provide an objective evaluation of teen safety online. The report extrapolates broad claims from a narrow and unrepresentative sample while largely ignoring the extensive safeguards Snap has implemented for teens.

“The reality is that no single safety feature or policy can eliminate every potential risk online or offline, and no platform is immune from bad actors who seek to abuse technology for illegal activity. That is why we continually adapt our strategies, invest in new protections, and work closely with safety experts, law enforcement, parents, and policymakers to combat evolving threats. We remain committed to strengthening our protections and helping to keep all Snapchatters safe.” – A Snap Company Spokesperson

To:  The Heat Initiative, ParentsTogether Action, 

Protecting teens online is demanding work. It requires rigor, precision, and the discipline to distinguish between insights drawn from a narrow exercise and conclusions about an entire system. Your new report does not meet that standard.

We’d first like to highlight shortcomings in the methodology. Your researchers apparently created a very small number of test accounts registered to “13-year-olds,” used supposed clean devices, followed 50 creator accounts said to be recommended by Snapchat, apparently searched for examples of sensitive topics, and then drew sweeping conclusions from roughly 12 total hours of viewing across two primary test accounts. This exercise may be useful as a narrow probe designed to surface potential edge-case concerns. It is not a sound basis for broad claims about the typical teen experience on Snapchat or about Snap’s seriousness as a company working to help protect young people online.

The report’s own evaluation framework is also unusually expansive. It defines “unsafe content” to include a wide range of risks: from sexual and drug content, violence, and self-harm references to body shaming, plastic surgery, dangerous challenges, racism, extremism, and hate speech. Most of these categories, in fact, contravene Snapchat’s Community Guidelines. But as we explain further below, not all violations carry the same degree of severity or warrant the same level of enforcement. Depending on the nature of the violation, Snap can take action against a user’s content, account, and/or device, and proactively report offenders to law enforcement, when appropriate. 

When such broad content categories are collapsed into a single headline, the result is more clutter than clarity. It may be designed to generate attention, but it does not help parents, policymakers, or platforms understand relative severity, pathways of exposure, or which interventions are most likely to reduce potential harm.

Your report further acknowledges that recommendation patterns changed over time and after researchers followed apparent suggested creators and searched for sensitive terms. Even so, it presents figures such as “739 unsafe videos” and recommends blunt and overly punitive measures such as ending algorithmic recommendations for everyone under 18. If the exercise was designed to be narrow, it should have been described accordingly. Instead, the report repeatedly slides from a constrained experiment into broad, rhetorical conclusions about Snapchat and its users as a whole.

That slippage matters because risk and harm are not the same thing. Both deserve serious attention, but not every exposure produces the same outcome, and not every concerning experience justifies the same policy prescription. Responsible analysis should preserve those distinctions, not ignore them for effect.

None of this is to suggest that Snap views teen safety concerns lightly. We do not. In fact, safety and well-being are central to our work. Internally, our platform safety vision is to promote and support the safety and well-being of the Snapchat community, particularly teens, through product design that has safety ingrained, coupled with technology, strong policies, operational excellence, industry- and cross-sector collaboration, effective regulation, and awareness-raising and education. That is not a slogan. It is the framework under which multiple teams across Snap build, enforce, educate, and adapt every day. It’s why we sought to engage with your organizations openly and collaboratively, despite the simultaneous adversarial social media and press engagement directed at us. 

Snapchat was built differently, opening directly to the camera, not an open feed. That difference matters. We default key privacy and safety settings to stricter standards for teens. We do not allow direct messaging between people who are not mutually accepted friends or are already in each other's contact book, and we have additional protections in place for teens with respect to other platform functionality. Those are meaningful architectural choices, especially in a landscape where unwanted contact remains one of the most common risks young people face online today. ¹

我們也繼續致力於提供青少年完善的體驗。例如，13 至 15 歲的 Snapchatter 現在可以在只有互相為共同好友才能看到的專用空間中創作、儲存並分享聚光燈影片。 沒有公開追蹤者。 不會顯示被加入「我的最愛」次數。 該年齡層不得公開發表貼文。 這與其他無安全保障措施的公司所採取的做法完全不同。

對於家長與照顧者而言，家庭中心提供有用的資訊，但不會使青少年完全沒有隱私。 它讓受信任的成年人看到青少年的好友名單、最近與誰聊天，以及位置分享設定；設定更嚴格的內容限制；並獲得特定聯絡關係的額外背景資訊。 最近，我們也在 Snapchat 部分功能中新增資訊透明度，並加入其他新訊號，幫助家人進行更有意義的對話，討論如何確保網路安全。

我們也限制可疑人士與青少年的聯絡方式，讓他們更難接觸到青少年。 當系統判斷嘗試聯絡的人不在青少年的現有社交圈內時，我們會在應用程式內傳送警告，青少年也可以使用我們的工具來主動忽略、封鎖並檢舉陌生聯絡人。

我們打擊性剝削與性勒索的努力也持續精進。 Snap 使用主動偵測技術，包括雜湊比對工具 (例如 PhotoDNA、Google 的 CSAI Match)，以及 Google 的內容安全 API，以及基於訊號的特殊偵測技術，用於在不良行為者攻擊他人之前事先偵測。 我們也參與重大的跨部門與跨產業計畫，包括 Technology Coalition 的Lantern計畫、國家失蹤與受剝削兒童中心 (NCMEC) 的 Take It Down、Internet Watch Foundation 與 Childline 的 Report Remove 計畫、StopNCII from Southwest Grid for Learning in the UK、全球網路論壇打擊恐怖主義的各項努力，以及致力防範自殺與自傷的 Thrive。 在 2026 年上半年，Snap 每天已處理約 220 起疑似性勒索案件，相當於全球每月約 6,600 起。 這正是所謂的永續投資。

我們也在投資教育，而不僅僅是違規處置。 我們的公開網路安全學習計畫「平安鑰」由外部專家與組織共同打造，包括 Common Sense Media、家庭線上安全研究所 (FOSI)、Thorn、網路霸凌研究中心以及 Song for Charlie，並由 Snap 各個全球青少年數位福祉委員會以及我們的國際安全諮詢委員會成員複審。 它因應青少年在任何平台、服務或應用程式上可能面臨的四項嚴重風險：霸凌、非法毒品活動、裸體與私密影像，以及性勒索。 它可供所有人使用，不僅限於 Snapchat 使用者，因為數位安全素養不該受平台的束縛。

更廣泛而言，Snap 一直致力在這場討論中提供有證據佐證的資訊，而非製造「恐慌」。 我們的數位福祉指數是一項跨平台研究，涵蓋年輕族群在廣泛的網路生態系統的體驗，而非僅是 Snapchat 本身。 在迄今為止發表的五次研究中的其中四次，整體 DWBI 分數從 62 提高至 64 分 ²(涵蓋四年)，即使在六個國家/地區中，13 至 24 歲族群的網路風險曝露率已從 2022 年的 76% 上升至 2025 年的 81%。這並不代表網路環境完全沒有問題。 這表示關於整體普遍下滑的情形，並未有證據作證。 這也表示，決策者與倡導者應該停止將恐懼視為分析研究，並開始提出更好的問題，包括支援、韌性、設計品質，以及如何幫助更多人在網路上有更好的體驗。

這項研究雖然涵蓋所有平台、服務與裝置，但並未特別聚焦於 Snapchat，它也顯示，當青少年擁有更多支援資源時，數位福祉會更好，並且有更多的年輕人在經歷網路風險後會主動尋求幫助。 換句話説，解決方法不是將這個問題濃縮成更多危言聳聽的頭條報導。 這是為了打造更好的產品、更棒的檢舉系統、更好的數位素養，並為年輕人提供更多支援。 這份工作進展雖然緩慢，也很辛苦。 但有可能發揮重要的作用。

而它正在產生顯著的結果。 Snap 的資料顯示，在嚴重危害內容的觀看次數方面已有顯著改善：從 2025 年 12 月到 2026 年 6 月，全球嚴重危害內容的觀看次數下降了約 71%。 ³ 同時，在公開故事的隨機抽樣中，嚴重危害內容的實際出現率也降低了約 63%。 這並不表示大功告成。 而是應對嚴重安全挑戰的正確做法是持續改善軟體系統，而不是把一個有限的實驗當作完全代表現實情形。

為了更妥善地保護青少年，Heat Initiative 與 ParentsTogether Action 也應該用他們要求平台的同樣標準，來約束自身的公開聲明。這表示對於研究方式及其限制，應完善說明。它意味著區分風險與危害。 必須承認那些會讓「既定論述」變得複雜的設計選擇與安全投入。 也就是說，要好好跟那些在第一線防範網路風險的公司、專家、家長和年輕人對話，而不是用醜化抹黑來假裝自己在監督。

我們沒說自己做得十全十美。沒有負責任的公司該如此聲稱。 但我們強調的是認真態度、持續努力，以及不斷進步的意願。 在這項表現上，Snap 的努力是實在、有效果且持續的。

謹啟， 

Snap 團隊敬上