Snapchat Switches Off Its Friend-Finder for UK Children After Regulator Pressure

Snapchat has begun disabling its "Find Friends" feature by default for child users in Britain, in what the country's media regulator called an important step to reduce the risk of online grooming.

The friend-discovery feature helps users find and add new contacts. Ofcom said the change would make it harder for strangers to contact children on the image-sharing platform, one of the largest and most popular online services used by children in Britain.

The regulator said in May that Snapchat was used by 32% of children aged 8 to 12 in Britain, despite the platform's minimum age restriction of 13.

Oliver Griffiths, director of Ofcom's Online Safety Group, called the change "long overdue" and said the regulator would monitor Snapchat's rollout of the new protection this month.

Snapchat had committed to make such a change in May, and told the regulator more recently that effective age checks for under-18s should be in place by the end of the year. The platform did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Concerns about online grooming on social media have run for years. A 2025 analysis of British police data by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children showed that 40% of recorded offences involving sexual communication with a child where the platform was identified took place on Snapchat.

Ofcom has pressed major tech firms to introduce stronger anti-grooming measures, saying online grooming can have "devastating, lifelong consequences" for children. The regulator also re-issued a warning to other tech companies failing to tackle grooming risks, saying they risk fines of up to 10% of their qualifying global revenue.

Sources

• Reuters — Snapchat starts disabling friend-finder feature for UK children, regulator says