Snapchat Turns Off Friend Suggestions by Default for UK Under-18s

Snap will set Find Friends to off by default for UK users under 18, and the change begins rolling out this month. Engadget reports that this is a default setting, not a new opt-in control.

Find Friends is Snap's friend-finding tool. It uses age, location, and existing friends and followers to suggest accounts a user might add. Under the change, those suggestions will be off by default for UK users under 18. Snap says the move is intended to meet its obligations under the UK Online Safety Act, according to its own help centre notice on UK safety updates.

The change sits alongside a separate age assurance programme. Oliver Griffiths, Ofcom's Online Safety Group director, has said that Snap will add “highly effective age checks” by the end of this year, according to Ofcom's update on its call to action. Snap's own progress update from 8 September 2026 says more than one million UK Snapchatters have been confirmed as over 18 through its rollout of highly effective age assurance (HEAA) so far. Snap's age assurance update is the most recent figure the company has published on that rollout.

Snap already applies several defaults to younger users. Teen accounts are private by default, and location sharing is off by default for all Snapchatters and is entirely optional. The company has also stated that there are no browsable public profiles for Snapchatters under 18. Those settings address discoverability and location. Find Friends addresses a third route, the recommendation layer that proposes connections between accounts. That layer can surface an adult account and a minor account to each other without either party searching for the other.

Snap has reported a community of over 850 million people.

Ofcom can fine non-compliant companies up to £18 million or 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever the regime applies. For a platform of Snap's size, the percentage ceiling is the figure that matters, and it is far larger than the fixed sum.

In my view, the default setting deserves more attention than the headline. Most users never change a default, so the setting that ships determines what a large share of accounts experience. A suggestion engine that works well for adults can produce unwanted contact for minors when the age signal, the system's estimate of how old an account holder is, is wrong or missing. That is why the age checks carry as much weight as the Find Friends toggle. The two changes only protect younger users if age assurance classifies accounts accurately.

The broader context here is a shift in where platform safety obligations are enforced. Rules are moving from policy documents into configuration: a default flag, an age gate, a recommendation filter. For the engineers who run these systems, the practical question is how a regulator will verify that a flag is set, and how a platform will demonstrate it.

There is a reasonable optimistic reading too. A private-by-default account with no public profile and no suggestion path to strangers narrows the routes by which an unknown adult can reach a child. Young users can still add people they know. The difference is that adding a contact now takes an active choice rather than a suggestion served up by the app. If the age checks land on schedule, the defaults and verification together offer a more concrete protection than a policy statement, and it is the kind of change that can be measured after launch.