"We Thought Snapchat Was Just an App - It Became an Obsession"
Parents share their experience navigating the most popular messaging app for tweens and teens
Today, I want to share a narrative that a mom shared with me about their journey with smartphones and social media- in particular, Snapchat.
As a reminder, Snapchat has monopolized the messaging space for tweens. When a child begins begging for a smartphone, it’s often driven by a motivation to use Snapchat in order to message friends. What parents often don’t realize is that Snapchat is so much more than just a texting platform- it has addictive features like Snapstreaks, location tracking which can cause FOMO, short videos similar to TikToks and Reels, and is the #1 platform used for child grooming.
These parents learned some of these things the hard way, and wanted to share their story in order to better equip other parents to handle their child’s pleas for Snapchat.
“Our son was only 9 years old when he got his first phone and that's largely because we lived in a small town where he wanted the freedom to wander all day, but we wanted the comfort and safety of knowing where he was.
As more kids he knew got access to phones, the more my son would ask for Snapchat. Originally, we held pretty firm that it wasn't a form of communication we were comfortable with and we didn't think he was old enough to fully understand the risks. However, by his 10th birthday we had started to re-consider our stance. The biggest reason I think we re-evaluated Snapchat is that the world of communication for kids is completely different now than when we were younger. No one calls, or texts, or goes to someone's house. Many kids had phones without numbers, and most, even with a number, are communicating solely in Snapchat. After a few months of discussion, most of which was trying to educate our son on the risks, our expectations, etc. we finally decided to allow him to have it.
At first it wasn't so bad; he saved all his messages and we would review them regularly. He never added people he didn't directly know and he was pretty sparse with his time on the app (as he was still spending most of his time outside fishing or hanging with friends).
But after about 8 months we started to notice little changes in his behaviour. He was quick to become moody if he wasn't able to be on his phone, he continually added people simply because they had "mutual connections" and he would often "forget" to save his messages in the app. As time went on, his behaviour only got worse. His emotions always felt like they were an extreme on one end or the other, he was becoming more disrespectful to our rules in the house and he stopped spending nearly as much time outside.
By 12 years old he had become quite literally obsessed with his snap score, snap streaks with other people, and whether someone had left him on "read". His anxiety and self confidence was at an all time low and he was struggling to put any real effort into school, hockey or the things he once used to love. As parents it was really challenging to know if some of his behaviour and emotions were just "normal pre-teen boy things" or if it was all related to his access to Snapchat. It just felt like we were constantly in a cycle of grounding him from his phone, seeing an improvement in behaviour, giving the phone back and then seeing a decline in behaviour again.
When I saw one of your posts on Instagram about the mental health impact social media apps have on kids, it felt like looking in a mirror of my life. It was a wake up call that our job as parents is to protect our kids from what we can, even at the risk of them being "uncool". Shortly after, we decided to restrict our son's phone time to an hour a day during the week and weekends free reign. During the times he was allowed his phone we still noticed him struggling to regulate himself on Snapchat. He was almost more frantic and irritable during this time because he felt like the window was closing of what messages he could send & receive.
So, next we decided to restrict Snapchat time specifically down to 5 minutes a day. My son cried and argued that it wasn't fair and he wouldn't be able to talk to anyone or do anything so we encouraged him to get the phone numbers of his closest friends so that we could allow him more time to text them. We also just kept trying to remind him that although it might feel like a punishment, it really wasn't. We were doing this because we were worried his mental health was really struggling and he didn't seem as happy as he used to and that if there was any way we could encourage him to feel differently, it was by "being the bad guy" and removing those negative apps. It took some time but slowly, the less time he had on Snapchat, we noticed small improvements to his behaviour.
His effort at school got better, he was more likely to play with his sister or go outside and he wasn't so angry with everything all the time. Eventually, after a few months with very limited time on Snapchat, he noticed that all of his real friends would text or call and so he was less likely to open the app then before.
Last summer he deleted the app from his phone and hasn't looked back since. It's been a year without it and at first it was difficult when friends or kids he'd meet would say "add me on Snap" but he quickly adapted to texting or calling instead. He has bounced back hugely from a mental health perspective and sometimes when I ask him about it, he says looking back now, or feeling the way he does now, he knows why we took it away. It was constantly too much stress and he feels like he is more confident in himself without it. We've seen his whole demeanour and outlook change and honestly, I wish I would've known the impact it would've had before giving it to him in the first place.
We won't be making the same mistake with our daughter. She's 9 with no phone and definitely NO plans to give her one.”