For more than two decades, I've worked to protect children from online exploitation, first as Commander of the New Jersey Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, later as CEO and Co-Founder of Raven (a non profit focused on combatting child exploitation), and now leading law enforcement and safety policy at Snap Inc. Across those roles, I've investigated child predators, worked with survivors and families, helped shape child safety policy, and testified before Congress on online exploitation and technology.

One lesson has remained remarkably consistent: when people are prevented from using one online environment, they rarely stop going online. They simply move somewhere else. 

That reality should be central to today's debate over proposals to ban teens from social media. Many advocates of proposals like these share the goal of making young people safer online. The question is whether these policies will actually achieve that outcome.

The Migration Problem

During undercover investigations targeting child predators and exploitation networks, I repeatedly saw the same pattern. When a platform became more effective at detecting potentially harmful behavior, offenders adapted. When moderation improved, they moved. When law enforcement pressure increased, they shifted. When safeguards made it harder to operate in plain sight, they looked for places with fewer rules, less oversight, and weaker safety protections.

The same dynamic applies to young people.

A teenager who wants to communicate online does not suddenly lose that desire because a law prohibits access to a popular, mainstream service. Resourceful young people look for alternatives. History has shown this over and over again. From anonymous chat rooms to foreign-hosted platforms, users find other pathways when restrictions are imposed. Teens are no different.

The internet is not disappearing. Digital communication is not going away. The question is not whether young people will go online. The question is where they will go.

Not All Platforms Are Equal

One of the biggest false assumptions in this debate is treating every online service as though it presents the same level of risk. They do not.

Some platforms, like Snapchat, have invested heavily in trust and safety infrastructure, age-appropriate design, parental tools, proactive detection, reporting systems, content moderation, and cooperation with law enforcement. These systems are not perfect, and neither are offline approaches to protecting children. But when thoughtfully designed, platform safety tools can be more scalable, more consistent, and better equipped to support early detection, reporting, and intervention compared to many traditional approaches. But they create something essential: the ability to detect risk and respond to it.

That ability allows intervention and reporting. It allows accountability. The ability to detect and respond to real risk gives parents, platforms, and law enforcement more opportunities to identify threatening behavior and act before harm may escalate or even occur.

That matters because when young people are pushed off responsible, values-respecting platforms, they do not move into a neutral environment. In many cases, they move into spaces that are riskier, unmoderated, or hosted in jurisdictions that can evade law enforcement investigations. In those environments, parents, platforms, and law enforcement have limited ways to respond quickly.

What Safety Investments Look Like in Practice

My current work has reinforced this same lesson.

At Snap, I have seen what it looks like when a company tries to build safety features directly into the product experience rather than treating safety as an afterthought. For younger users, that includes design choices and guardrails intended to reduce risk, not just react to it. It includes stronger defaults for teens, limiting broad exposure, and creating tools that give families more insights into how young people are using the service.

Just as importantly, it reflects a basic principle that policymakers should keep in mind: there is a meaningful difference between keeping teens inside environments that have safety systems, reporting channels, parental tools, and accountability structures, and pushing them toward spaces where those protections may not exist at all.

Snapchat’s Family Center is one example of that philosophy. It gives parents and caregivers more insight into who their teen is communicating with, the new friends they have added, how they spend their time on Snapchat, certain privacy and safety settings, location-sharing choices, and other signals that can help a family spot concerns early and start conversations sooner. Those tools do not eliminate every risk. But they create visibility and opportunities to intervene.

The Unintended Consequence Policymakers Should Consider

The core assumption behind many age-ban proposals is that removing minors from mainstream platforms removes risk.

My experience suggests something different. Risk does not disappear. Risk relocates.

Policymakers should focus less on keeping young people off platforms and more on making platforms safer. That means designing products with age-appropriate protections, giving parents meaningful tools, investing in trust and safety teams, improving reporting and detection systems, engaging with law enforcement, increasing transparency, and ensuring young people receive digital literacy education. These measures address potential risk directly while providing meaningful tools, the ability to identify problems, and to intervene before any harm escalates.

Safety Over Symbolism

Protecting young people online is one of the most important policy challenges of our time. But effective policy requires more than good intentions. It requires understanding how people actually behave.

My experience investigating child exploitation, participating in undercover operations, leading a child safety organization, testifying before Congress, and now working at a technology company has led me to one conclusion: children deserve safer online experiences, not policy solutions that simply move them out of sight.

The answer is not just removing young people from the platforms where safety investments already exist. The answer is building and demanding digital environments where safety, accountability, and intervention are embedded into the experience itself.  The goal should not be symbolism. The goal should be safety. And those are not always the same thing.

— John Pizzuro, Head of Law Enforcement & Safety Policy, Snap Inc.