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

LONDON, Nov 6 (Reuters) - British media regulator Ofcom said on Friday that Snapchat had begun disabling its "Find Friends" feature by default for child users in Britain, in what it 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 social media platform, one it considers among 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, said the change was "long overdue" and 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.

A spokesperson for Snapchat said the platform would "continue to strengthen our protections as risks evolve and work constructively with Ofcom, safety experts, families, and young people to help ensure Snapchat remains a safe place for people to communicate and express themselves."

There have long been concerns about online grooming on social media.

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. It has said that 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 risked fines of up to 10% of their qualifying global revenue.

(Reporting by Sam Tabahriti, Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Louise Heavens)