LOS ANGELES, June 25 — Snapchat has introduced an update to their application specially designed for users under 13, who are not permitted to access the full original app.

Snapchat iOS app. — Pic courtesy of Snapchat

Snapchat is a photo-messaging app which allows users to send images to selected other users, these images will then be deleted after a pre-specified amount of time. The app, which in certain circles has become synonymous with the phenomenon known as “sexting,” previously had a minimum age limit of 13.

However the start-up has now released an update to its application, dubbed SnapKidz, for those under the age of 13. When users of Snapchat fill in their information if they indicate in the required field that they are under 13 years of age then their data will not be stored and no account will be created — instead they will be given access to SnapKidz which functions as an “app within an app.”

SnapKidz does not give its young users access to the photo-sharing facilities of the original application but instead enables users to take pictures and add captions or create drawings, but users cannot share these images/drawings or add friends.

As the company stated in a blog post, “SnapKidz [is] a version of Snapchat that includes an interface for taking snaps, captioning, drawing, and saving them locally on the device, but does not support sending or receiving snaps or adding friends.”

The update to Snapchat rolled out to iOS on June 22 and, according to the company, will be included in an Android update “if all goes well.”

The idea of temporarily sharing photos with select friends is growing and a relatively new application Clipchat aims to take the trend further by enabling users to share, for a limited time only, videos of up to 5 seconds on length.  — AFP/Relaxnews