Everything parents need to know about Snapchat

If your children are starting to use the Snapchat mobile application now that it has exploded in popularity, here we will tell you how to use it properly and responsibly.

Children use it, like so many other social networks, to communicate with their friends and keep up to date with what they are doing, for them it is faster than WhatsApp. Yes, you have read correctly. They can also follow celebrities who update their profile on this app through it.

What is Snapchat for?

The instant messaging app for iPhone and Android allows you to send photos and videos that self-destruct after a certain time after being viewed.

How is it used?

To share a photo, you must press the circular button on the screen. To make a video, you must hold down for several seconds.

Two options to share it

• After capturing the photo or making the video, you can select 'my story' to make the video public and show it to all contacts, you can select one friend or several.
• You can start a chat with a person and there you can share photos, text and videos with him.

Snapchat offers the possibility to edit videos and photos and use the most fun filters.

In the lower left part you can click on the clock icon and choose the time that the image will last until it is automatically deleted.

In the upper right part you can write by hand, including emoticons.

By sliding your finger to the right or left you can add filters in the Instagram style. If you touch on the screen you can add personalized text and place it where you want.

If you want to add a fun filter that suits your face, hold your finger on your face.

Different uses

In addition to sending photos and videos with different filters, Snapchat has a portal called 'Discover', in which the most important news and information from around the world and from different media are published.

Currently, you can already find numerous celebrities on Snapchat; singers, artists, actors, YouTube’s, models, athletes and follow their publications.

Risks and recommendations

Snapchat is having success among young people, as it allows them to exchange images or videos of sexual or pornographic content. Even if the image disappears after a few seconds, you can always take screenshots. If this happens, the app notifies you. However, by then the damage will already be done. Two months ago, Tovanna Holton, a 15-year-old American, committed suicide three hours after a friend posted a nude photo of her on Snapchat.

In addition to being prudent, since you never know who can harm us or vice versa, it is recommended to reset the password from time to time and not have the same one for everything.

On the other hand, the privacy policy of the app itself includes in its terms and conditions that you have the right to "store and share any photo that is published in the app." So the images or videos are not really temporary.

It is important to check your privacy settings, your friends list and check that you have people you really know to avoid sex offenders impersonating other people. In addition, there is a great risk when connecting third-party apps to Snapchat, since some of them could be spies and collect intimate photos.

Snapchat Menu Navigation

Once we have finished the registration, we have to find out how we navigate through the application and what the main menus that we must know are.

• The first screen that will appear to us is the main screen and from here we can record a Snap, upload it, include filters, music, cut it... (in conclusion, edit our publications), in the upper left part we will have a magnifying glass with which we can search for friends or groups to interact with them and just to the left of our avatar photo we will find everything related to our profile and publications (our stories, friends, Snap or Spotlight tokens)
• On the second screen where we see a world map (bottom left in the location button) in this tab we can know where our friends are if they have the location activated or from where they upload stories, we also have user posts from iconic places in the world like the eiffel tower.
• The chat is the third tab of Snapchat (the second from the left), in it we can talk privately with our friends or contacts by clicking on their image and send messages, emoticons, photos or videos, we also have the ability to add friends new through magnifying glass.
• The fourth screen is that of the stories, in it we will find videos of both our friends and users of similar topics that we may like or of videos that are in trend, these will be of short duration and also those that we like can be saved in the icon that appears at the top right when we are viewing a video.
• Fifth and last section is Spotlight, this is a tab dedicated to videos with a maximum duration of 60 seconds similar to stories in which you will see videos of users from all over the world creating content dedicated to this section.