The Snapchat app is seen on a smartphone in this illustration taken on July 13, 2021. (File Image: Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

British media regulator Ofcom said on Friday that Snapchat had begun disabling its “Find Friends” feature by default for child users in Britain, in what it called an important step to reduce the risk of online grooming.

The friend-discovery feature helps users find and add new contacts.

Ofcom said the change would make it harder for strangers ⁠to contact ​children on the image-sharing social media platform, one it considers among the largest and most popular online services used by children in Britain.

The regulator said in May that Snapchat was used by 32% ​of children ​aged 8 to 12 in Britain, ⁠despite the platform’s minimum age restriction of 13.

Oliver Griffiths, director of Ofcom’s Online Safety Group, said the change ‌was “long overdue” and the regulator would monitor Snapchat’s rollout of the new protection this month.

Snapchat had committed to make such a change in May, and…