Snapchat is Harming Children at an Industrial Scale

 

Jon Haidt

 and 

Zach Rausch

On October 1, 2024, investigative journalist Jeff Horwitz reported a startling statistic from an internal Snap Inc. email quoted in a court case against Snap Inc., the company which owns Snapchat. The email noted that the company receives around 10,000 reports of sextortion each month—and that figure is likely “only a fraction of the total abuse occurring on the platform.”

This statistic prompted us to investigate what else Snap Inc. knows or believes about the impact of its product on users, particularly teens (We estimate that roughly 13 million American 13-17 year-olds use Snapchat). Over the past several months, we have examined multiple court cases filed against Snap Inc., many involving severe or fatal harm that was (allegedly) facilitated by Snapchat’s features. From 2022 through 2025, as part of the Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) and Judicial Council Coordinated Proceedings (JCCP) against social media defendants, more than 6001 such lawsuits specifically named Snap Inc. as a defendant. In addition, state attorneys general from Nevada and New Mexico have brought significant cases against the company—two cases which we will draw heavily from in this post.

Following the format of our previous post about the “industrial scale harms” attributed to TikTok, this piece presents dozens of quotations from internal reports, studies, memos, conversations, and public statements in which Snap executives, employees, and consultants acknowledge and discuss the harms that Snapchat causes to many minors who use their platform. We group these findings into five key clusters of harms:

1. Addictive, Compulsive, and Problematic Use

2. Drugs and Guns

3. Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), Sextortion, and In-person Sexual Predation and Assault

4. Cyberbullying

5. Knowledge of Harm and Underage Use, and Lack of Action

Similar to TikTok, we show that company insiders were aware of multiple widespread and serious harms, and in many cases did not act promptly or make substantial changes. As Snap’s director of security engineering said regarding Android users who are selling drugs or child sexual abuse material on Snap:

“That’s fine it’s been broken for ten years we can tolerate tonight.”2

With regard to sextortion on the platform, one employee had complained in a private channel:

“God I’m so pissed that were over-run by this sextortion shit right now. We’ve twiddled our thumbs and wrung our hands all f…ing year.”3

The briefs allege that the company is also aware of rampant underage use, and of the ineffectiveness of their age gating process. Snap executives have admitted that Snapchat’s age verification system

“Is effectively useless in stopping underage users from signing up to the Snapchat app.”4

Although the evidence below is all publicly available, no one has compiled and combined direct quotations from company insiders and internal reports across multiple alleged harms. We think this compilation gives vital information to parents, who might want some insight into the business practices of a company that hosts their children’s social lives, owns much of their attention, and influences their social development.

At the start of each section, we highlight a real-life example—drawn from relevant court documents—illustrating the specific harm in question. Each child’s story offers a human perspective on the broader statistics and quotations that reveal the far-reaching harms discussed within the company. ...

[MUCH MORE]

https://www.afterbabel.com/p/industrial-scale-snapchat