Snapchat has opened a new feature to teenagers aged 16 and 17. These users can now share videos publicly on Spotlight, which is Snapchat's short-form video feed similar to TikTok or Instagram Reels. When they do, their profile shows who created the video. This is the first time Snapchat has allowed this age group to have publicly visible creator profiles on the platform. Snap announced the change in September 2024.

What Has Changed

Before this update, only adults could have public profiles and share videos that showed their names as creators. Teenagers aged 16 and 17 were not able to do this.

Now they can. If a 16- or 17-year-old chooses to submit a video to Spotlight, their profile becomes public, and other Snapchat users can see who created the video and visit their profile. This is different from sending a private message to friends.

Importantly, this is opt-in. Teenagers have to actively choose to make their profile public or submit a video to Spotlight. Snapchat doesn't force it on them automatically.

The change only applies to 16- and 17-year-olds, not younger teenagers. Snapchat continues to have stricter privacy rules for users aged 13 to 15.

Safety Features Around This Change

This change doesn't happen in a vacuum. Snapchat added other safety protections for younger users in September 2023. Those safeguards limited who can contact teenagers and made it harder for unknown adults to reach them.

Snapchat also built a tool called Family Center. This lets parents see who their teenage child is chatting with and where they are — but not read their messages. Parents and teens can set this up inside the Snapchat app without needing other monitoring software.

So the company is offering this new public creator feature alongside tools that give parents more visibility and that make it harder for strangers to contact teenagers.

Why Snapchat Is Making This Move

There are two reasons pulling in different directions here.

First, Snapchat's business. The platform competes with TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube for young creators. Those platforms already let teenagers make and share videos with their names attached. If Snapchat doesn't offer the same thing, teenagers have less reason to post there. More creators mean more videos, which means more users, which means more money.

Second, regulation. Governments in the UK, Europe, and the United States are paying close attention to how social platforms treat minors. New laws like the UK's Online Safety Act and the EU's Digital Services Act require platforms to protect young people. Any change that affects teenagers is now reviewed not just by the platform's safety team but by regulators who can punish platforms that break the rules.

Snapchat's decision to frame this as giving teenagers a way to express themselves — while keeping the safety guardrails in place — fits what regulators are expecting platforms to do.

How Platforms Handle Age Restrictions

The age-based approach Snapchat is using — stricter rules for younger teens, fewer restrictions for older teens — is becoming common across the industry. The idea is a ladder: 13-year-olds get the most protection, 16- and 17-year-olds get more freedom, and 18-year-olds can access everything.

But there is a gap here worth mentioning. Snapchat relies on users to tell the truth about their age when they sign up. The company tries to use other clues to catch fake ages, but the system is not foolproof. In the early days of social media — the 2000s — age verification was mostly just asking people their birthdate. The industry hasn't fundamentally solved this problem yet, even though regulators are pushing for better tools to check ages.

What This Means for You

If your 16- or 17-year-old uses Snapchat and posts a video to Spotlight, that video is now public. Anyone on Snapchat can find it. This is different from a private message sent only to friends.

Parents can still use Family Center to see who their teenager is communicating with and where they are. But once a video is on Spotlight, it is public, and Family Center doesn't change that.

Snapchat is trying to balance two things: giving older teenagers a real way to create and share content, while keeping them safer from strangers and from some of the commercial pressures that come with being a public creator. Whether this balance works will depend on how regulators respond and whether the safety tools actually do what they are supposed to do.