It’s important to note that the ‘Meet Up’ feature does increase the risk of unsolicited house calls from online ‘friends’, loss of personal information, and potential exposure to in-person harassment. In any incident involving serious threat or risk, local authorities should be notified immediately.

The feature is designed to be used by close friends and family who want to share their location and directions for getting there. For example, if two friends are meeting for a study session, then Meet Up would allow them to organise without having to manually send and input addresses into a navigation system.

For young people, feeling like they are connected with their friends is extremely important – in-person and online. In a digital world where many friendships are created, sustained, and showcased entirely online, any avenue for further connection is likely to be a hit with how young people socialise. Features like this encourage young people to be ‘authentic’ with their location. Authentic connection is more important than ever to young people, so seeing what their friend is up to and sharing their activities will have a fun factor element.

It’s important to note that this feature is only available to use between in-app ‘friends’. Random users are not able to access this. However – users are not informed when another user is searching for their location with Meet Up.

Snapchat does not offer any automatic location privacy – Snap Map is on by default. The only form of location privacy available is called ‘Ghost Mode’. This tool allows users to remove all live location features from the app. For a step-by-step process on how to activate Ghost Mode, check out our online safety centre.

It’s worth mentioning that enabling Ghost Mode removes the user from the Snap Map entirely. A young person may not want to completely disappear, especially if their friends are using the app as well. In this case, they are able to choose specific friends to share their location with in settings (as well as users they do not want to have access to that information).

While Snapchat created previous features like Live Location to mitigate risks, there does not seem to be the same intention behind Meet Up. As with any location sharing app or platform, there is always a risk to sharing this personal information. Remember: live location and/or addresses should only be shared with trusted family and friends. Revealing location or a personal address could result in:

There have been previous concerns regarding Snapchat’s original map sharing feature, Snap Map. In one reported case, a child sex abuser was convicted after using the tool to target and force young girls into sending child sexual abuse imagery.

To help you keep the young person in your care safe online, follow the advice below.