national-delete-snapchat-dayToday is National Delete Snapchat Day, a grassroots effort to #SaveTheKids from the destructive side of modern technology. Youth advocate Collin Kartchner posted the following on Instagram:

Enough is enough. This app is a disaster. Time to say goodbye, Snapchat. You used to be fun, but now you are horrible. We as parents are taking a stand to get our kids off this app. Let’s all do it together? ⭐Tweens/teens⭐—Week from today, by June 1st at 6pm, deactivate your account.

The day June 1 coincides with the date that Cosmopolitan had planned to start an adult content channel in the Discover section of Snapchat called “Cosmo After Dark.” Every Friday night at 6:00pm, it would share X-rated content. Cosmopolitan quickly removed the channel after it received a major backlash from parents.

Colin provided the following explanation to LDS S.M.I.L.E.:

As I travel around the state and the country talking to junior high and high school kids at assemblies about the negative effects of social media on their self-esteem and self worth, I’m constantly talking to kids about Snapchat and hearing from them how this is what’s sucking their life and their self-esteem away.
   
Snapchat is an app that was created for one reason, and that is to send naked photos to one another. They put the cutesy filters on them to make it feel like it’s a family-friendly app, but let’s not forget why it was  made in the first place.
   
Even the local junior high where my oldest will go next year had a story done there where an eighth grade teacher asked 90 students to fill in the blank “one thing my parents don’t know about social media is_____.” And the answers were horrifying. Almost all of them said that at least once or twice a week they see nude photos. They’re asked to send nude photos. Whether they want to see them or not they’re shared amongst classmates, all on Snapchat.

Others have joined the fight. LDS young man Bray Hallman posted the following video on Facebook:

“I was addicted to pornography at the age of 12 years old, and Snapchat was a huge cause for that; it was so easy to send stuff, to receive stuff,” Bray said. For years, the addiction took over his life. “I couldn’t delete it. I had this addiction to Snapchat because I wanted it so bad I couldn’t even delete it or get rid of it.” He finally hit rock bottom. “I got to a point I was super depressed and even suicidal and I knew I needed to change something.”

If you want to join this effort, here are the steps to delete your Snapchat account:

  1. Go to Snapchat’s Delete Account page online.
  2. Enter your username and password to log into your Snapchat account.
  3. The Delete Account page will pop up and you’ll be asked again to enter your username and password.
  4. Accounts take 30 days to delete.

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