Are you aware of the new map feature in Snapchat?  If you’re a parent, you’ll want to be!

The new feature is called Snap Map and it became a thing last week.  with Snap Map, Snapchat tracks your location on a map and places your Bitmoji wherever you are.  Users can even zoom in and find the exact location of where you are… all the way down to the street address.

Snapchat says Snap Map is there for you to find your friends and also see stories from areas with a lot of users uploading videos. Sounds cool in a perfect world, but police around the area are warning of the dangers for both kids and people who may be dealing with a domestic violence situation.

Unless you’ve turned your Snapchat account to “Ghost Mode” anyone who follows you can see your location at any time.  If you’re hanging out with other Snapchat users, it shows that as well. There have been a few stories of people finding out their significant other is cheating with a “friend”.  So now let’s put that into a safety situation like when you’re kids are walking home from school, at a friend’s house, even at school, potential predators have real-time information. That becomes real creepy, real fast!

The new feature also shows snaps around on the map as well; earlier, I was watching a little girl sing Katy Perry in Rockford, MI, got a tour of someone’s newly decorated living room and then saw a group of friends on the swings at a park.  I didn’t know any of those people, but I got a glimpse of their life.

By putting your account in “Ghost Mode” you can choose who can see where you are: All your friends, select friends, or only me.

So, let’s disable your location on Snapchat by enabling “Ghost Mode”:

Go to your camera tool like you're going to take a picture or video, now pinch and zoom in on the screen with two fingers, this will access the map.  Once you're on the map, go to the top right corner on your screen and click the Settings icon.  Now you can enable "Ghost Mode" and decide who sees your location.

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