The Lifestage app invites Generation Z to create a series of selfie videos, but gives its young users no tools for controlling privacy and who sees the content

Facebook has launched a video selfie sharing app for teenagers which has no privacy settings. What could possibly go wrong?

Lifestage, which launched in the US on Friday, is restricted to users under the age of 21. It’s designed to make it “easy and fun to share a visual profile of who you are with your school network”.

The app invites users to create a series of videos showing their happy face, sad face, how they dance and sign, their favorite and least favorite song and who their best friend is. Users can also share videos of their classroom, locker, backyard and kitchen. The videos are all framed with cute animations, which give it a definite Snapchat feel.

However, unlike Snapchat, Lifestage gives its young users no tools for controlling who sees the content – something privacy campaigners are concerned about.

When users first sign up, they are greeted with the following message:

“Everything you post in Lifestage is always public and viewable by everyone, inside and outside your school. There is no way to limit the audience of your videos. We can’t confirm that people who claim to go to a certain school actually go to that school. All videos you upload to your profile and record are fully public content.”

Although Lifestage is clear with its users upfront about the public nature of the platform, there’s something about social media that can confuse people’s privacy intuitions, says Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at ACLU.

“You may intellectually be fully aware that Twitter is open for the entire world to read, but you may nonetheless end up in a conversation with a few people and forget that behind those people lies the entire world looking over your shoulder at that conversation,” he said.

The fact that Lifestage centers on video rather than text sharing makes it particularly visceral.

“A picture is worth a thousand words and a video is probably worth a million,” said Stanley. “If it was my child using it, I would definitely have a talk with them and make sure they fully understand the potential ramifications of posting videos online for the entire world to see.”

The development of Lifestage was led by 19-year-old wunderkind Michael Sayman, who learned to code at age 13 and already has a few apps under his belt. He has said that he is trying to take Facebook back to its early roots, when it was restricted to schools and universities.

“Back in 2004, Facebook was all about ‘who I am’. I could post my relationship status. I could share what my favorite music was. And it was all about expressing myself,” said Sayman in a Facebook post.

“Today as Facebook has grown into so much more, we see the opportunity to explore that concept of ‘who I am’ once again, but for Generation Z in 2016.”

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Lifestage isn’t a messaging app – Sayman told TechCrunch there are already “a bajillion” of those. Instead it is somewhere between an address book and a digital scrapbook of interests. Users fill out a “reach me” section where they can tell others how best to get in touch, whether via Snapchat or Instagram.

It’s no secret that Facebook has been struggling to keep teens’ attention and has been desperately trying to replicate the secret sauce that makes Snapchat such a hit with this age group.

After a failed attempt to acquire Snapchat for $3bn in 2013, Facebook has launched a series of features that seem to “borrow” heavily from it. These include: disappearing messages (through an app called Slingshot, which flopped), the ability to draw and add emojis to photos, scannable profiles called Messenger Codes and animated filters. The company also launched a feature earlier in August 2016 called Stories for Instagram, which lets users share a collection of photos and videos that disappears after 24 hours, just like Snapchat’s Stories.

“They’ve just been trying to be cool so much instead of actually becoming cool,” said digital strategist Tyler Hartsook, from communications firm Jackson Spalding.

“This is the first chance they’ve broken off and tried something that’s a little different. It has some Snapchat elements to it, but there are elements of originality.”

He adds that the fact that it’s founded by someone the same age as the target users gives it more authenticity. “It’s something made by them for them, rather than Facebook just rolling out a thing.”

Sayman doesn’t take kindly to those describing Lifestage as a Snapchat clone.

Michael Sayman (@michaelsayman) Open app to a camera and ur a "snapchat clone". Then maybe I should go back to 1996 and make it a text box? No? 😂lol

It’s early days, but Lifestage currently has an average rating of 2.5 stars out of a possible 5 on the App Store.

“I don’t like how much information you have to give out. I don’t want my phone number to be known nor do I want everyone to know my Instagram and Snapchat,” said reviewer Lolzeka.

“I could not figure out how to take a picture or why my school was needed. Like I said, I don’t want all my information out there.”

In a statement, a Facebook spokeswoman said that Lifestage was being released to a limited number of high schools and wouldn’t give anyone who lists their age as above 21 access to content from other users.

“We encourage anyone using the app who experiences or witnesses any concerning activity to report it to us through the reporting options built into the app. We take these reports seriously. Unlike other places on the web, Lifestage is tied to a person’s phone number and only one account is allowed per phone number – this provides an additional level of protection and enforcement.”