I didn't have to worry about snap chat until my kids were in college. Facebook and text was bad enough.

We had rules and discussed proper behavior all the time. Most of my monitoring was done on the sly and I would pick and chose my battles based on the infraction. It was my daughter, not son who was the problem most of the time.

When the iphone came along we made my daughter turn on location services because she betrayed our trust a couple of times. We'd spot check her and when it was close to curfew and she wasn't home we'd start tracking her down. She was really mad. "you never did that to (older brother)! Well we never needed to.

We also tracked who she called or texted by looking at usage online at AT&T. She didn't know we did that, but we when there was a lot of calls/text to a particular number we would name it on AT&T so we could monitor it. We certainly didn't want Roy Moore to be calling her.

If I were you I'd be tempted to let your kid have snap chat if he wants it. Tell him he can have it on a conditional period and you will want to monitor it. If it becomes a problem then take it away. I am so glad those middle school and high school days are over for my kids. Good luck!