by:  Gemma Smith

Over the past few years, social media has greatly changed our ways of conversing online. Snapchat is a social media app where users can send pictures and then the  messages disappear after a certain number of seconds. The app is popular among many teens as it is a common way of interacting with friends and family.

Snapchat has been continuously updating their software throughout the years with new features and ways to use the app, such as creating streaks and stories. Over time, it has become a major form of communication with many teens.

As popular as Snapchat has become, it’s not necessarily a good kind of popularity. Having a streak through Snapchat is when a user sends a picture each day to the same person, just to continue adding to the number of days of the streak. Streaks can be a pointless, time-consuming way to use your phone–at times it seems stupid to just send someone a selfie or a random picture of what you’re currently up to with nothing else being said. It’s not even real communication, which is what the app was originally intended.

The obsession with Snapchat streaks is crazy because people will even give their account password to someone else to save their streaks if they are not able to keep them during a certain time. It’s weird that this has become a thing where a certain number of days on Snapchat seems so important.

I use Snapchat on a daily basis, but I can honestly say that at times I question why I’m spending so much time on the app when I could be actually talking to someone face to face or just actual texting.

 Parents also worry about their kids using Snapchat. Snapchat’s pictures disappear after anywhere up to ten seconds, but it’s still concerning to many parents because they don’t know exactly what their kids are sending. Even though the pictures disappear, they are still out on the internet forever and the person receiving the photo can still save it by screenshotting. Recently with the newest update, you can now send snaps for an infinite number of seconds, which could cause more issues.

Snapchat was meant for talking with the fun idea of sending a snap of something along with having a conversation, but now it just seems people are sending random pictures with no context. It’s disappointing to see how verbal communication is slowly decreasing over time between teenagers compared to what it used to be like.