

Teens need to understand what’s at stake if they make their stories public.

Talk to your teen about the risk Snap Map imposes. If a teen shares their location with a bully or a predator posing as a friend, the cost could be grave. The Our Story feature of Snap Map shows your teen’s stories to strangers across the globe as well.

Snap Map allows you to see a person’s location down to the street name and building. This feature is only available for mutual friends and only works up to eight hours after the app was last opened. A map will then appear in the private conversation. Similar to Apple’s “Find My Friends,” the feature allows you to send your location or requests a friend’s. Now, you can broadcast your location to select friends instead of all your Snapchat friends. Snapchat has rolled out its newest location-sharing feature: Send and Request. If your teen posts a story to the Our Story feature, anyone in the world can see their snap. All Snapchat users can post and view these stories, whether they’re friends or not. When you click anywhere on the map, various public Snap stories taken in that location will pop up. Besides location sharing, Snap Map also has an “Our Story” feature. However, some teens may turn it on to let their friends see their whereabouts. Its default setting is “Ghost Mode,” which prevents friends from seeing your location. Snap Map is a location sharing feature of Snapchat and automatically updates while you have Snapchat open. Now, a year and several updates later, here’s why the Snap Map feature on Snapchat can still be dangerous for your teen. Still, the feature remains in use to this day. Parents and users expressed concern about the dangers of Snap Map on Snapchat, including an invasion of privacy and the risks of location sharing. Snapchat’s Snap Map has been a feature of the app since the summer of 2017.
