Snapchat up to no good.

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A Snapchat feature lets paying users see their position in their friends’ digital orbits. For some teens, whose friends are everything, it’s adding to their anxiety.

Snapchat+ is the app’s $4-a-month subscription service. Subscribers can check where they rank with a particular friend based on how often that friend communicates with them. The result is automatically rendered in a solar-system metaphor: Are you Mercury, the planet closest to your friend? Great! Uranus? Bad sign....


The young adults I spoke to with those paid accounts said they’ve seen friendships splinter and young love wither due to the knowledge that someone else ranks higher on the app. Some say teens have signed up for Snapchat+ just to check their status with a crush.

Like other social-media features, Snapchat’s solar system was created to get people to engage more with the app. And while it can be turned off, it’s on by default. Now, lawmakers, doctors and parents are giving fuller attention to these apps and how they broadly affect kids’ mental health. New legislation and lawsuits have pressed tech companies to better protect minors on social media, if not block them from it outright....

A Snap spokeswoman says the friend solar system is one of more than 30 features on Snapchat+. Most are intended to help users customize the app, and all can be easily turned off. A friend’s solar-system ranking isn’t visible to others—users can only see their position in relation to a friend, and can’t see who is closer or farther away. Snapchat+ subscribers can pin friends they want to appear closer.

The company has no plans to turn off the feature, but the spokeswoman says it is always open to feedback. “We always prioritize our community’s well-being,” she says, adding that the majority of the seven million Snapchat+ subscribers worldwide are over 18....

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