In a world where instantaneous connection through messaging apps is extremely accessible, it’s intriguing to see just how disconnected we’ve become. In the blink of an eye, we can launch text messages to people from all over the world—we can share content, host meetings, and make friends. But, in the case of some social media platforms, the line between practical and actively detrimental proceeds to blur. While apps like Tiktok and Instagram heighten the negative emotions of the digital age, I would nominate Snapchat as the biggest offender, with the program contributing the most to a modern disillusionment with reality. As the gamification of relationships increases, our treatment of each other as individuals decreases. Questionable app features, worrisome mental effects, and a growing detachment from reality; Snapchat raises a lost generation. But can we truly blame Snapchat for these troublesome effects, or can we instead attribute these dilemmas to the youth’s declining moral compass?
Built on the foundation of snappy, lighthearted interactions between friends, Snapchat holds a strong influence on 13-24 year olds. While other platforms have a focus on short form content and more substantial posts from your friends/family, Snapchat continues to develop and modify the messaging aspect. Snapchat promises privacy to its users, lulling young kids into a position where they feel invincible to repercussions. Readily accessible maps reveal the location of all your friends, including people you’ve never met in real life. Photos and video clips sent through this app disappear after the user opens them, with young kids often taking advantage of the invisibility. Unfiltered explicit content can easily break through the system, and parents would have no way of knowing. Additionally, workarounds like browser extensions, app add-ons, or a simple screenshot immediately jeopardize the integrity of these messages. This, however, would not be an issue if every Snap user followed the same moral compass. Unfortunately, it seems, private messaging and vanishing photos have a sort of inverse effect on middle schoolers, who follow various guides to learn how to bypass privacy. WikiHow, Quora, and other popular online forums contain a stream of immoral answers to gossiping kids or teens who want to enact revenge on someone.
On top of the harmful exploitation of the privacy systems, Snapchat’s users create a sort of hierarchical, cliquey ranking of friends and acquaintances. It’s very telling that one of the first results when you search up “Snapchat” is “what does the yellow heart vs the red heart mean?” As perceived by its users, the culmination of your points earned by interactions with a friend, otherwise known as your Snapscore, paints a clear image of who cares about you and who doesn’t. Different types of heart emojis reveal your personal relationship statuses to everyone in every social circle. Focus group interviews conducted by ScienceDirect researchers reveal that “adolescents indicated that engaging in a Snapchat streak offers them the opportunity to renegotiate their relationship with their friends and to participate in a shared project. Additionally, the study revealed that students viewed breaking a Snapchat streak as a personal rejection.” Streaks, another major feature of the app, encourage the user to stay in touch with friends every single day, setting a social expectation that perfectly meshes with the social deterioration of the younger generations. As indicated by the researchers, keeping both streaks and snapscore up act as a kind of social buyin, creating a currency through which favors can be exchanged between acquaintances. Seemingly, a significant amount of users also believe that Snapchat friendships have a price as well—if a friend or significant other breaks a streak, they no longer value you as much as they did before.
To some, Snapchat’s just a fun platform where you don’t have to “try as hard” as Instagram (which is such an upsetting thing to say in and of itself). To me, Snapchat is the breeding ground for teenage insecurity, fomo, and loneliness. Despite claiming to champion honesty, privacy, and casual messaging, Snapchat fosters an environment where teens distrust one another, fear exposing personal information, and overthink every choice they make. While the users certainly contribute to this stressful and depressing world of bite-sized messages, their rampant and conflicted emotions cannot carry the blame for the exploitative and mentally invasive system that Snapchat has built its identity upon.