It’s Not Just Snapchat: We Need to Stop Chasing Apps and Start Teaching Principles

We continue to hear from parents and caregivers who are concerned about Snapchat and, in particular, its ability to allow youth and teens to send messages, pictures, and videos that disappear after they have been viewed. It is an understandable concern. Snapchat helped popularize this form of communication among young people, and disappearing content remains a significant part of how the platform works. However, there is an important reality that often gets missed in conversations about Snapchat, which is that disappearing and temporary messaging is no longer unique to Snapchat.

Many of the communication and social media platforms used by youth, teens, and adults now offer some form of disappearing, temporary, self-destructing, or “view once” communication. Depending on the platform and settings being used, examples can include:

• Instagram: disappearing photos and videos sent through direct messaging, along with other temporary content features.

• Signal: Disappearing Messages that can automatically remove messages after a selected period of time.

• Messenger: disappearing-message functionality within encrypted conversations.

• WhatsApp: Disappearing Messages as well as “View Once” photos, videos, and voice messages.

• Telegram: Secret Chats that can include self-destruct timers.

• X: X Chat has introduced disappearing-message functionality.

This matters because if our online safety strategy is simply to identify Snapchat as “the disappearing message app,” we risk missing the larger lesson. Ephemeral communication has become a feature rather than a platform.

Disappearing Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Gone

One of the most important conversations parents and caregivers can have with a youth or teen is about what the word “disappearing” actually means online.

When an app says that a message, photograph, or video disappears, it generally means that the content will no longer be displayed to the participants through the normal interface after a particular condition has been met. It does not necessarily mean that every copy of that communication has ceased to exist.

The person receiving the content may be able to take a screenshot, make a screen recording, photograph the screen using another device, copy information elsewhere, or otherwise preserve what was sent before it disappears. Some platforms may notify the sender when certain types of captures occur, but parents and youth should never rely upon those notifications as a guarantee that content has not been preserved. Remember, the notification comes after the screenshot has been taken. It alerts you to the capture, but it cannot prevent the other person from keeping the content

Signal, for example, specifically cautions users that its disappearing message feature is not intended for situations where the person receiving the communication is an adversary. In other words, technology can automatically remove something from a conversation, but it cannot guarantee that another human being has not found another way to preserve it.

This distinction is particularly important when talking with youth and teens about intimate images, bullying, threats, harassment, sextortion, grooming, or other communications where a young person may believe there will be no permanent record of what they send or receive.

Deleted From the Screen Does Not Always Mean Deleted Everywhere

There is another important distinction that parents and caregivers should understand. What disappears from a user’s screen and what may continue to exist within a company’s technical infrastructure are not necessarily the same thing.

How long information is retained varies significantly between platforms, the type of communication involved, the privacy architecture of the service, whether end-to-end encryption is being used, the user’s settings, backup systems, and the company’s data retention practices.

In some circumstances, certain account information, metadata, or content may remain available to a service provider for some period of time even though the user can no longer see it. Where information is actually retained and legally obtainable, law enforcement may potentially seek access through the appropriate Canadian legal process. What can be obtained will depend upon what information exists, where it is stored, the platform involved, and the circumstances of the investigation.

This is why parents and caregivers should be cautious about telling a child either that “everything online lasts forever” or, at the opposite extreme, that disappearing messages are truly gone forever. Neither statement accurately captures how today’s digital ecosystem works.

A better message is that once you send something to another person, you can lose control over what happens to it.

Why We Need to Stop Chasing Apps

For years, online safety education has often revolved around particular apps. Parents hear about Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, Discord, Telegram, or whatever platform happens to be attracting attention at the moment and understandably ask, “Is this app safe?” 

The Challenge is that apps change, and features migrate between platforms. A feature that was once associated almost exclusively with one service eventually appears on several others. Young people move between platforms, new apps emerge, old platforms evolve, and communication increasingly moves between public social media, private messaging, gaming environments, group chats, encrypted services, and other digital spaces.

Trying to memorize every feature of every platform your child might use is becoming an almost impossible parenting strategy. This is why we believe parents and caregivers need to increasingly focus on the human factors behind how technology is being used, rather than trying to chase every individual app.

Instead of only asking, “Does this app have disappearing messages?” we should also be teaching young people to ask, “Why am I sending this?, “Who am I sending it to?”, “What could happen if someone saves it?”, “Would I be comfortable if this communication became permanent?”, “Is someone pressuring me to move into a disappearing or encrypted conversation?”, “Why might they want that?”, and “What should I do if something happens that makes me uncomfortable?”

Those questions work whether a child is using Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Messenger, X, or a platform that hasn’t even been invented yet.

Principles Stay the Same, Diverse In Their Application

Technology will continue to change faster than most parents, schools, legislation, and online safety programs can possibly keep up with. The specific buttons, settings, apps, and platforms will come and go. The underlying human principles are far more durable.

Consent matters regardless of the platform, trust matters regardless of the platform, privacy matters regardless of the platform, critical thinking matters regardless of the platform, and recognizing manipulation, coercion, grooming, and unhealthy relationship dynamics matters regardless of the platform. Knowing when and how to reach out to a trusted adult when something goes wrong matters regardless of the platform. 

This is why we often remind parents and caregivers, “Principles stay the same, what changes is how we apply them.” Rather than attempting to raise children who know how to safely use one particular app, our goal should be to raise digitally literate young people who can take those principles with them wherever technology goes next.

Snapchat’s disappearing messages are worth understanding. So are disappearing messages on Instagram, Signal, Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, X, and whatever platform introduces them next. However, the most important safety feature will never be a setting buried somewhere inside an app, it’s the knowledge, judgment, critical thinking, relationship skills, and digital literacy that our children bring with them when they use it.

Digital Food For Thought

The White Hatter

Facts Not Fear, Facts Not Emotions, Enlighten Not Frighten, Know Tech Not No Tech