Unpopular-Opinion: Snapchat Is Toxic
October 20, 2020
By some astonishing awful miracle, each one of these social media platforms somehow come up with a way to become worse and worse each generation iteration, but what makes snapchat so undeniably obnoxious?
Snapchat is one of the most “trendy” and “hip” picture-based apps, and in my personal unpopular-opinion, Snapchat is overrated. You need everyone to know what exactly what you’re doing at all times. If you at a concert, out for dinner or doing something completely mundane and unimportant, your “third eyes” need to be locked on to whatever is going on. It’s absolutely imperative that all your friends need to know you were invited to this very “special” party, everyone needs to know that you’re having coffee at Starbuck right now, everyone who follows you needs to hear the “hilarious” joke you just stole from Instagram. Be true to yourself, how many times Snapchat has made you constantly realize you didn’t get invited ? Or that your life isn’t as cool as someone else’s. It is hard not to feel like you are always missing out when people broadcast every second of every day on their “My Story.”
So the gimmick behind Snapchat is that when you send someone a picture, you only have a certain amount of time to look at it, before it vanishes into the ether, forever. And while this timer is ticking down you have the choice to screenshot it if you’d like to keep it, and if you do decide to screenshot it, the other person is informed when a screen shot has been taken. So as you can imagine, a whole lot of giggles ensue…more seriously, a lot of teenager nudes have leaked. I am not going to talk about what or whether students should or shouldn’t do with their body because it is a whole different conversation. But as I interviewed 10 different girl at my high school, more than ⅗ of the boys they used to have “conversation” on Snapchat has asked for nudes. It was always obvious that this was one way to use the app. With a great deal of teenage girls and boys using Snapchat, do you still think that it’s being used innocently? Even those who don’t intend to use the app in such a way can be sidetracked into it because it’s just that easy. After all, innocence can be corrupted and this is an accelerating tool in that process.
The worst part: it’s how people take pictures of you beyond your consent. People literally call your name so you look over and they take a picture of you. No words, just a non-consensual picture. And it happens every day at school. Oh ! I didn’t even mention their location sharing feature. Right now I can look on the “snap map” and see that more than 10 of the people I follow are sharing their exact location! And only 2 of them are actually out of town doing things, the rest are sharing the exact location of their house. Child predators, kidnappers, stalkers, etc…could start using these features and find out kids’ houses and it doesn’t take much imagination to figure how that can go wrong. Worst feature by far to have in a social media app that has a lot of kids on it.
Last but not least, Snapchat even encourages streakings as well…which is worrying. Why do you all care so much about streakings? My friends all do “streaks” and they literally cry whenever they lose their streaks. They literally go as far as using all their data using Snapchat and email Snapchat to get their streaks back. Whenever I hang out with them all they want to do is sit down on Snapchat or take selfies for their stories. I remember in school one day I heard half the class saying that they have to continue their streak to get to 100 doing the exact same thing every time.
Instead of bringing us together, Snapchat has often made me feel isolated and alone. It makes me feel unworthy of an invite or that my life is boring. If you took a harder look, you would think the same thing, too. So take a break from Snapchat and snap back into reality. You are worthy of the invite. Your life is full of adventure. Take in everything the world has to offer, but with your eyes, not a lens.
