Newsletter: Gun Violence Education for the Snapchat Generation – The Trace

The Trace Newsletter A social media campaign challenging the idea that guns make kids more safe appears to be breaking through. Snapchat, the disappearing-message app, holds an unusual appeal for young people. Nearly half of teenagers ages 13 to 17 say they use Snapchat every day, according to a December 2025 Pew report, compared with 25 percent of adults who said they’ve ever used the platform — a decline from 2024, at that. Those stats were probably in mind when the violence prevention organization Project Unloaded launched a Snapchat messaging campaign on the dangers of guns. The organization’s Safer Not Using Guns campaign originally launched in 2022, with the goal of challenging the idea that guns make kids safer. Four years later, it seems the campaign is changing minds. An analysis conducted this past spring found that 13- to 17-year-olds — the youngest of whom, I was alarmed to realize, are members of Generation Alpha — on SnapChat who were aware of the campaign were more likely to say that guns come with a lot of risks. In her latest story, Fairriona Magee breaks down the analysis, and the larger implications for violence prevention among teens. From The Trace Snaps
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