- Snapchat is changing a friend rankings feature due to reports of teen anxiety.
- The premium feature allowed users to see their location in the so-called solar system of their friends.
- The decision highlights growing concerns about the impact of social media on adolescent mental health.
Snapchat is backtracking on a feature that lets paying users see how close they are to their friends’ social circles, after reports it made teens anxious and insecure about their relationships.
The so-called solar system feature, available to Snapchat+ users, shows where you are in a particular friend’s “orbit”, based on how often you communicate. In theory, this means that the closer you are to their “sun”, the closer the friendship.
“We understand that while it can feel good to know that you are close to someone, it can also hurt to know that you are not as close to a friend as you would like,” admitted the company in a press release. .
Snapchat announced Monday that it would disable this feature by default. Subscribers to the platform’s $4 per month service tier will still be able to re-enable the feature.
“We hope this strikes the right balance between providing a feature that many of those who use it want while avoiding upsetting those who don’t want to use it,” the company said. “We will also take the time to further evaluate the feature and determine if there are other ways to improve it for our community.”
Snapchat said the solar system helps provide “additional awareness and context” to online relationships that “often lack the same context and social cues” as in-person interactions.
However, some teens said this only added to their stress and insecurity about their interpersonal relationships.
A 15-year-old girl told the Wall Street Journal that the report contributed to the deterioration of her relationship with her boyfriend after he discovered that he was only Neptune in her solar system – and that another of his friends was Mercury.
“A lot of kids my age have trouble differentiating their best friends on Snapchat from best friends in real life,” she added.
Snapchat noted that the feature doesn’t show other friends and individual locations aren’t visible to anyone else.
But the episode brought the focus back to the relationship between social media and teen mental health. Experts have suggested that social media contributes to feelings of loneliness, and Snapchat and other platforms have been targets of lawsuits.
Tensions between lawmakers and social media CEOs — including Snap’s Evan Spiegel — erupted during a congressional hearing on the topic of child safety and mental health earlier this year.
businessinsider
