By Chloe Brussard
Imagine. It's summer of 2011 and a new social media app was just released. The application is yellow with a small white ghost on it, and this app allows you to send photos to your friends. You can take a picture of the sun or of your face or anything you want, really, and share that moment with someone else, but only for a maximum of 10 seconds. After that, the photo disappears, never to be seen again. The popularity that this app has gained is tremendous, and nowadays, almost everyone has Snapchat on the home page of their phone.
The app caught on by word of mouth, quite literally. Once one person got it, they urged their friends to get it too, so they can connect on this new messaging app. For me, the reason that I got Snapchat was because it was so new, when I was entering middle school. All my friends had it, and I would feel left out if I didn't have it. So, I begged my parents to let me get one, and eventually they did. And I have had it ever since.
But, just as there are upsides to social media, there are also downfalls. This app is extremely addicting, and people tend to use it all the time. Too much social media can be distracting, and take time away from academic studies or work. Even though you get to share things with your friends, now it just seem like people have it just for the sake of having it.
Over the years, Snapchat has updated itself to stay with the times, by adding stories, filters, and a media outlet on their app. But, maybe the most business smart move on their part was creating Snapchat Streaks. This is a feature that shows you how many days in a row that you and another person have been Snapchatting each other. Since I have had this app for over 5 years, some of the "Streaks" that I have with some friends are well over 1,000 days.
That's the reason that I haven't deleted that app yet. I feel an obligation to keep that streak going, because we worked on it for so long. It is practically meaningless, but since the number of days that me and some of my friends have is so large, we feel like it would be a waste to cut it off now. Sometimes I think to myself why so I still have this app, but it always comes back to the Streaks.
Another interesting aspect of the app is the filters. You can have your camera screen your face and then you can change your appearance, to have dog ears, big eyes, or a flower crown etc. This app was created to send photos to friends, and now it is currently using it's camera privileges to screen their users faces. Whether or not they store the data they have is something I do not know, but if they wanted to they could have the faces of hundreds of thousands of people.
Even though I am well aware of the fact that I have probably an unhealthy dependence on my social medias, I am working to try and get better at limiting my screen time. The social media apps that I use are directly designed to keep their users on their app, and I can attest to the fact that it is working quite well. Maybe someday I will work up the nerve to delete some of my social media apps, but, unfortunately, that day isn't somewhere in the near future.
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