I’m sure I’m among the minority when I say I can’t stand Snapchat. Aside from the funhouse filters, it offers no real value to our social lives. Some people use it to keep up with people who are halfway around the world, and this makes for a brilliant use of the app. But the vast majority of people that I’ve seen use the app stage their Snapchat stories to make their lives look more interesting and more entertaining than they are.
The intent behind the use doesn’t matter because it all amounts to the same thing: sending multiple pictures back and forth to distort reality and only show the best parts of yourself to those on the other side of the screen.
I understand most people would like their online presence to reflect the best versions of themselves, but my main issue with Snapchat is that nothing is real. The version of yourself people see is a carefully curated, extremely filtered version. What happened to being human? Since when is it not okay to look like you just rolled out of bed or like you’re having a bad day?
I watched some people I was with one night recreate a moment so someone could put it on their Snapchat story. What’s wrong with only sharing that funny moment with your friends who are in the room? I was completely taken aback — I knew people staged things for the sake of their online presence, but I had never seen it happen right before my eyes.
It was as if I was watching a director directing actors in a movie. The Snapchatter pulled out her phone after my friend made a clever comment to my roommate. I can’t remember the exact words, but my roommate who was Snapchatting said “Wait, say that again!” and the guest said the exact line again. Only this time, she spoke with more emphasis because she knew she was being filmed.
To be clear, I don’t hate social media. In fact, I am an avid user of Instagram and Twitter. I have a Snapchat, but I don’t use it because it is annoying, and I just don’t get it. I think social media connects us and lets us keep up with people we want to keep up with. I’m a fan of vlogging, but that sort of thing should be reserved for a YouTube channel, not a four-minute-long Snapchat story of your day.
So what’s the real difference between YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and other platforms anyway? YouTube was founded for vlogs and other video content. Instagram is used to share pictures and short videos with your followers. Twitter is used to communicate and express everyday observations to the Internet.
In a world with all of these tools, Snapchat’s most basic reason for existing is to make it easier to sext, especially now with the release of the “My Eyes Only” tool where you can passcode-protect saved Snaps.
But enough about how I just don’t like the app. Let’s examine the actual issues with it.
The fact that your pictures “disappear” is sketchy. These days when even the government is subject to hacks, who’s to say that our snaps aren’t being filed away in order to profile us even more than we already are? The disappearing pictures could be one click or one code away from being public knowledge.
These days, anything you put on the internet is subject to profiling. In fact, your viewing of this article is adding to your identity on the internet. It’s inevitable that data will be collected from your online actions, but we seem to think this doesn’t apply to the app that “deletes” your photos.
We aren’t entirely careful with what we put on the internet, but I like to think there is generally some sort of filter in our minds. I would think twice about posting the picture with my friends and I in mini skirts at a bar on Facebook or Instagram, but sending a Snapchat of the same picture somehow doesn’t have the same level of consequence.
Our perceived privacy from the app makes for unabashed sending of pictures to anyone on your Snapchat list. The worst part is that Snapchat owns all of your photos. The app’s terms of privacy says, “Snaps submitted to live and other crowd-sourced stories are inherently public and chronicle matters of public interest. We may save them indefinitely and allow them to be viewed again through any of our services or third-party sources.”
People who only have copious amounts of dog filters to be ashamed about might say, “So what if they have my information? I have nothing to hide.” But what about others?
Promiscuity is promoted in this kind of environment where you can send a picture and have it disappear, unless someone carefully takes a screenshot just in time. The app was known for sexting in its beginning stages, and I doubt that it has made that far of a departure from its roots.
Snapchat fosters the idea that many choices we make are not permanent. The stories expire within 24 hours, the Snaps themselves disappear within seconds, and we do these things without a second thought of where they’re going. But the things we choose to say and share with people online will always be out there. In Snapchat-land, permanence does not seem like a reality, but it is.
On March 2, Snapchat became a publicly traded company. People have already started questioning how much longer the app can keep itself afloat.
Brian Wieser is an analyst at Pivotal Research Group . Wieser told Business Insider that Snapchat is “significantly overvalued given the likely scale of its long-term opportunity and the risks associated with executing against that opportunity.”
In addition, Nomura analyst Anthony DiClemente told Business Insider that he sees a six percent downside in the stock.
“Snapchat’s slowing user growth ultimately caps its long-term revenue opportunity,” DiClemente said in the interview.
While things may look positive right now, these analysts seem to think differently about the long-term direction of the company. I mean, how long can you compete with Facebook and Instagram — which has its own story options — until you just call it quits?
I think this financial concern comes from the decline Snapchat’s user numbers and the updates to other social media in order to keep up in the industry. People are beginning to realize their Snaps might not be as protected as they once thought and the added features to other highly used apps like Instagram makes it hard for Snapchat to stay relevant. According to a January 2017 article on omnicoreagency.com, only 18 percent of US social media users use Snapchat.
The spark for my anger seems to be stemming from the amount of ignorance about our online privacy and the abuse of the app itself. It is unnecessary to have when other apps exist for long form videos, stories, photo and video sharing and getting your news exist.
It seems that its overall uselessness in our society might be mirrored financially, and it’s only a matter of time until Snapchat goes the way of the now-defunct video app Vine.
Myia Hambrick is a 21-year-old mass communication major from Temple, Georgia.