Snapchat Turns Off Find Friends for UK Under-18s, But Some Options Remain

Snapchat has started switching off its Find Friends recommendations by default for UK users under 18, making it harder for strangers to discover teenagers through the platform’s automatic friend suggestions.

The change began rolling out on 6 November following sustained pressure from online safety regulator Ofcom. Snapchat expects the new default to reach eligible users during November, with Ofcom monitoring the rollout.

Find Friends is Snapchat’s account-discovery feature, designed to help people connect with friends and family they may already know. Its recommendations use signals including age, location, existing friends, existing followers, reputation and behaviour on Snapchat, according to the company’s published explanation.

Previously, users could receive suggestions of people they might know and appear in recommendations shown to other accounts. Under the new UK default, both sides of that process are switched off for users under 18.

Snapchat says the settings called ‘Enable Find Friends’ and ‘Show me in Find Friends’ will remain disabled unless users choose to turn them on. Young users will no longer receive Find Friends recommendations on their Add Friends page or automatically appear in other people’s suggestions. Suggestion-based and recently joined friend notifications are also disabled.

However, the change does not make teenagers completely invisible on Snapchat.

The company’s UK safety guidance confirms that an account can still appear in Search when someone enters an exact match for the user’s name or username. Other ways of finding accounts include searching for a display name or using a Snapcode.

There is an important difference between these methods and automatic recommendations. Find Friends suggests accounts without someone necessarily knowing the person’s username. A direct search requires someone to look for an account deliberately, while a Snapcode provides another way to access a profile when its code has been shared.

Phone contacts are another possible route. If a teenager has chosen to synchronise their contacts with Snapchat, people in their own phone address book can still appear on the Add Friends page, allowing the teenager to send them friend requests.

Snapchat’s wider safety documentation describes additional restrictions designed to make it harder for unfamiliar adults to find teenagers. These include limiting teenagers’ visibility in search results unless the platform detects signs of an existing connection, such as multiple mutual friends or an existing phone contact.

The company also says it can delay and investigate certain friend requests involving teenagers when the sender has no mutual friends and has a history of accessing Snapchat from locations associated with scam activity.

These are additional safeguards described by Snap, rather than a guarantee that every unfamiliar account will be prevented from finding a teenager. Its UK-specific Find Friends guidance and broader teen-safety documentation do not explain every possible search scenario in identical terms.

Finding an account is also different from being able to contact its owner. Snapchat says teenage accounts have additional contact protections, with direct communication generally limited to mutually accepted friends and people whose phone numbers are already in the user’s contacts.

Its contact controls determine who can send Snaps, Chats and calls. Snapchat’s privacy guidance also makes clear that people in a group chat can communicate within that group even when an account is set to accept direct contact from friends only.

The company offers blocking, removing friends and reporting tools for unwanted interactions. However, switching off Find Friends does not disable every existing connection or prevent every possible interaction through group chats and other routes.

Snapchat says it is also introducing additional warnings for UK teenagers. These include alerts when the platform has reason to believe someone trying to connect may not be known to the user, as well as notices when a teenager joins a group chat containing someone who is not already their Snapchat friend.

The group-chat notice gives the teenager the option to open the conversation, go back or learn more. The warnings are intended to encourage young users to consider whether they know and trust someone before accepting a connection.

The changes follow Ofcom’s wider campaign to strengthen child-safety protections across major social media platforms. On 12 March 2026, the regulator wrote to Snapchat, Meta, Roblox, TikTok and YouTube, requiring them to demonstrate a genuine commitment to protecting children online.

After receiving responses by its 30 April deadline, Ofcom announced on 21 May that Snap had agreed to introduce significant anti-grooming measures. These included stronger default protections against adults contacting children they do not know and changes to stop children being encouraged to expand their friendship groups to strangers.

Ofcom said Snapchat had committed to adopting the grooming-prevention measures in its Illegal Harms Codes, supported by highly effective age assurance. The regulator also warned that these commitments needed to translate into practical changes and that it would scrutinise their implementation.

Oliver Griffiths, Ofcom’s Online Safety Group Director, described the November rollout as an important improvement but said it was “long overdue”. He said the regulator would hold Snapchat accountable for completing the changes during November.

Snapchat’s spokesperson told Reuters that the company would continue strengthening its protections as risks evolve and work with Ofcom, safety experts, families and young people.

Age assurance is another important part of the commitment. Ofcom says Snapchat recently confirmed that highly effective age checks should be applied by the end of 2026 to ensure all users under 18 benefit from the new protections.

The timetable has changed since May. In its original report, Ofcom expected Snapchat to complete the wider age-assurance rollout by the end of summer. Its November statement now refers to the company’s latest confirmation that the checks should be in place by the end of the year. Ofcom has not publicly explained the change in timing.

This matters because age-specific settings depend on platforms being able to establish whether an account belongs to a child or an adult. If an under-18 account is incorrectly treated as belonging to an adult, the young user may not receive the intended safeguards.

Snapchat reported on 8 September that more than one million UK users had been confirmed as over 18 through its enhanced age-assurance programme. The company says its methods include age signals from app stores and operating systems, age-estimation systems, user reports, proactive detection, human review and additional age verification when needed.

Snapchat also says that, where a verified email address or phone number provides sufficient evidence that someone is an adult, its verification provider can return an over-18 result without sharing the underlying information with Snap. Where the platform cannot establish someone’s age confidently, it may request an additional approved verification method.

The one-million figure is a milestone reported by Snapchat. It does not establish how many under-18 accounts remain incorrectly classified or whether every eligible young user is already receiving the new protections.

The scale of underage use helps explain why Ofcom has made age assurance a priority. Its May 2026 research estimated that Snapchat reached 32% of UK children aged eight to 12, despite the platform’s stated minimum age of 13. The figure describes reported service use and reach, not a verified count of individual Snapchat accounts.

Ofcom’s wider research also found that existing minimum-age policies were not being enforced effectively across several major platforms. In May, the regulator said the Online Safety Act did not explicitly require services to use highly effective age assurance simply to prevent every underage child from accessing platforms with a minimum age of 13.

Separately, NSPCC analysis published in November 2025 found that Snapchat accounted for 40% of 2,111 police-recorded offences involving sexual communication with a child where police could identify the platform used. The figure provides important context about the risks associated with online communication, but it does not mean Snapchat was involved in 40% of all grooming offences.

The Online Safety Act nevertheless requires services likely to be accessed by children to assess risks and introduce appropriate protections. Ofcom can investigate suspected non-compliance and, where the legal requirements are met, impose enforcement measures. The maximum financial penalty can reach £18 million or 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever is greater.

That does not mean Snapchat has already been fined or that Ofcom has announced a formal enforcement investigation into this particular rollout. The November announcement describes monitoring and accountability, with enforcement action possible if companies fail to meet their obligations.

For parents and guardians, the new default is a useful additional safeguard, but it is worth checking the account’s wider privacy settings as well.

To review Find Friends, open the child’s Profile, tap the Settings gear, select Privacy Controls and then Find Friends. Check that both ‘Enable Find Friends’ and ‘Show me in Find Friends’ remain switched off. Snapchat says users can manually enable the feature, so parents should not assume the default is a permanent restriction.

It is also worth reviewing the ‘Contact Me’ setting, which controls who can send Snaps, Chats and calls. Check whether contact access includes phone contacts, whether the child has synchronised their address book and who can see their location on Snap Map. Snapchat says location sharing is off by default and can only be shared with accepted friends.

Parents should also consider whether an older teenager has chosen to use a Public Profile. These profiles are unavailable to users under 16, while eligible 16- and 17-year-olds can opt into a more limited public-sharing experience.

Snapchat’s Family Center offers another way for parents and guardians to understand a teenager’s connections. It can show existing and recently added friends, recent conversations and group-chat participants without revealing the contents of private messages.

The regulator’s next task is to establish whether the promised changes are being implemented consistently and whether the age checks are sufficiently effective to cover all under-18 users. Ofcom will also need to assess whether the wider protections work in practice rather than simply appearing in company policy.

For now, Snapchat has made one important discovery route less accessible by default. But exact searches, shared Snapcodes and synchronised contacts can still provide ways to find accounts, while other safeguards are needed to manage what happens after someone attempts to connect. The change reduces one opportunity for unwanted contact; it does not remove the need for broader privacy protections and effective age checks.