When students arrived at school on Thursday, many were greeted by an unusual sight: dozens of riot-police officers holding shields, batons, and tear-gas canisters. If a class bell rang, it would have been hard to hear over the fireworks and chanting of hundreds of students who were gathered at the gates.
“More funding for our schools!” the crowd shouted, while a student in a Spider-Man suit delivered a passionate speech through a megaphone. Nearby, a girl held up a banner that read, “More Teachers, More Chairs, More Hope” on one side, and “All Baddies Protest” on the other.
At Bartholdi High School in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, the blockade started with a Snap. Jade, a junior, tells Teen Vogue that after news spread that students at other schools near Paris were gathering to protest, a girl in her class took to the app. “She said it was unacceptable for us to be living under these conditions at the high school. So, she started a [Snapchat] group with almost everyone from the school. That's when we started protesting.”
In Jade’s own words, she says, “There are no teachers. There is no water, there are leaks in the classrooms. When it's hot, we have no way to cool off.”
What started as grassroots organizing in mid-September in response to absent teachers and crumbling schools on the outskirts of Paris has transformed into a nationwide protest led by teenagers. By October 1, nearly a quarter of the country’s 3,700 high schools were affected by protests, according to the French government.
Outrage has been building for decades over the growing inequality between schools in wealthy cities and those in poorer suburbs and rural areas. Recent viral clips have brought that divide into stark view, showing classrooms with unsanitary conditions and pest infestation. And the inequalities extend beyond buildings: In 2022, students in more affluent, better-served areas scored 113 points higher in math than their less advantaged peers, according to an Organisation for Economic Cooperation, or OECD, study.
Students have found support far beyond the classroom: On October 6, 266,000 people took to the streets nationwide, including teachers and parents, according to official figures from France’s Interior Ministry, as reported by The Washington Post. On October 8, around 24,500 people marched on the Bastille, as reported by Reuters, where the French Revolution began in 1789.
Across France, protesters have used Snapchat groups to spread word from one school to the next and coordinate demonstrations. But why did they choose the ghost app above TikTok or Instagram?
Sitting at the protest, Noaïm, a high school senior turned organizer, explains why Snapchat is an obvious choice for his generation. “A lot of people don't have Instagram,” he says. “Being in a Snapchat group is great because of the instant video messaging—everyone knows where to meet up or where to be.”
Snapchat does have a catch: Its group chats can only hold so many people. But students have found ways to work around that. “On Snap, you can't have more than [201] people in a group…. Sometimes people from other high schools would join the groups too. There was some turnover, with some people leaving and others joining as spots opened up,” adds Noaïm. Sometimes, on the days of the actual blockades, the students create smaller groups with those who directly organize them, enabling them to better work around that 201 constraint.
The app offers students a way to organize without putting everything on public display: Unsaved messages disappear, while bitmojis and generic usernames blur identities more than on Instagram, for instance. Features like Snap Map have helped students find demonstrations as the protests shifted between schools.
At a nearby gathering in front of Paul Éluard High School, Shaïma, a university student who joined the protests, shows Teen Vogue the Snap she recorded from the scene of a crowd of students chanting with riot police surrounding them. “I just took it for my friend so she knows where to join me,” she says. “We don’t use Snapchat to encourage people to do anything reckless; it’s more about peaceful communication—like simply sharing the time or a date so we stay organized.”
The same app students have used to find one another has also captured what can happen when things get tense. Over two weeks in Saint-Denis, confrontations escalated: Some people set fire to bins and threw projectiles at riot police, who responded with tear gas and baton charges.
“Personally, I thank Snapchat every day because it provides proof of when certain police officers abuse their authority. It’s always evidence you can bring forward,” says Shaïma, citing a video in France, which reportedly shows an incident where a 15-year-old lost his hand following the explosion of a grenade allegedly fired by the police. The footage has since circulated widely online and been reportedly verified by French media outlets. Several videos of students being injured could provide important evidence in future investigations.
But the videos don't stay solely on Snapchat for long: In recent weeks, X, Instagram, and Tiktok have filled up with protest clips. Some capture the lighter side of these actions, including teens holding “aura battles” against a police officer or their principal. Others show the moments when demonstrations turned violent, such as a video of an officer aggressively putting a teenage girl in a choke hold or of masked individuals looting and destroying high schools.
Alongside the videos, screenshots began circulating that appeared to show police officers trying to enter students’ Snapchat groups. The messages, written in exaggerated and often racist stereotypes of how teenagers speak, have become a source of seemingly endless memes. But some organizers say the threat is legitimate. “We received messages, but we don't know whether they were real or not. Our groups had already been infiltrated, so in our student union, we simply switched apps,” says Aïssatou, an organizer in their junior year.
Some of the messages quickly turned to slurs, showing the dark side of Snapchat’s anonymity—a recurring dynamic Teen Vogue has previously reported on in the case of a Cornell University fraternity using crass, demeaning, sexualized language on a Snapchat group amid an alleged rape.
But disappearing messages don’t necessarily mean disappearing evidence. “Officially, Snapchat cooperates with French authorities. This means it can provide technical information linked to an account, which may help investigators identify the person behind it,” Camille Lucotte, a Paris-based human rights lawyer, tells Teen Vogue by email.
Snapchat messages are encrypted, she explains further, but that doesn’t make users untraceable. In response to valid legal requests, the company may provide account information, including registration details and IP logs.
The risks aren’t just hypothetical for French students: By October 8, 5,890 minors had been placed in police custody in connection with the protests, according to France’s Ministry of Justice. “Young people can consider deleting apps from their phones,” Lucotte says. “Under [French] law, they are required to provide the unlock code for their phone, but not the usernames and passwords for their apps. As young protesters are very interconnected, investigators have access to a vast amount of information by examining a single phone.”
Apps like Signal say they offer an alternative, because their end-to-end encryption means that even the app itself does not have access to the contents of messages exchanged. But no app can guarantee that it will never collaborate with law enforcement.
Still, organizers like Noaïm, for one, aren’t planning on logging off. He says students will keep using social media to organize and will keep protesting for better schools: “I’m not worried. If the police ever ask me to unlock my phone, in the worst-case scenario, I simply won’t do it,” referring to what Lucotte says is considered “a stand-alone offense.”
“And if they take me to the station, I’ll ask for a lawyer, and that’s all there is to it,” Noaïm adds with a smile, before heading back to join the crowd.
Teen Vogue has reached out to Snapchat for comment but, as of publication, has not received a response. This story may be updated.