Snapchat admits age verification failures to MPs

Executives at Snapchat have been grilled by MPs over the company's system to verify the age of its users and ensure they're over 13.

One MP told the company that he had been able to sign up for the app after telling it he was just 12 years old; when the system told him he must be older, he was simply able to change the age he gave.

During a hearing before a parliamentary committee, the company's representatives accepted its age verification systems when users signed up for the platform weren't robust enough.

Its senior director for public policy, Stephen Collins, and its director of creative strategy, Will Scougal, said that Snapchat did not want underage users on its platform.

They stressed that there was no commercial advantage to having children under the age of 13 on the app.

They said they do have methods to check if users are underage at sign-up, mainly by tracking cookies in web browsers, but that these don't work when people sign up for the app instead of creating their account using the web.

Mr Collins added that Snapchat did analyse its users' behaviour to identify whether underage users had got past its rules, but admitted there wasn't a "foolproof way" to prevent this from happening.

He agreed that in some cases its age verification processes "did not work".

He also told the committee that Snapchat, which has 186 million daily active users, was working with the Home Office to develop a "robust age verification" system.

A spokesperson for the Home Office confirmed that the company was part of a group of technology companies and experts it has brought together to consider how to do age verification online.

They said: "We want the UK to be the safest place to be online, especially for children. The home secretary and culture secretary have both reminded tech firms about their responsibilities towards their users."

It added: "We expect tech companies to remove child sexual abuse content when they find it, stop online grooming, shut down live streaming of abuse and, where necessary, have robust age verification measures in place to keep children safe.

"Our forthcoming Online Harms white paper will set out a range of measures to tackle online harms and set clear responsibilities for tech companies to keep UK citizens safe."

The white paper is expected to make social networks liable for the content on their platforms.

The Snapchat executives were also asked if the company was concerned whether the app's filters were encouraging body dysmorphia by showing young girls unrealistic versions of their bodies.

Body dysmorphia, or body dysmorphic disorder, is defined by the NHS as "a mental health condition where a person spends a lot of time worrying about flaws in their appearance. These flaws are often unnoticeable to others."

According to the executives, the filters were simply a "fun way" of providing a different look at the real world, but they acknowledged that "more research was needed" on the effects of beauty apps.

The MPs, from the digital, culture, media and sport committee, also criticised Snapchat for developing features which contributed to it being "addictive" for younger users, specifically singling out the "streaks" feature.

Streaks are a feature which marks friendships on Snapchat with a flame and a number showing how many days the individuals have been in constant communication.

According to MPs, young people are often giving friends access to their accounts so that certain streaks may be maintained.

Although the executives from the company said that streaks weren't an integral part of the app, the MPs responded that they served a similar purpose to likes on Facebook and retweets on Twitter.

Mr Collins responded that the company would be revisiting the feature.