How Genuine is Snapchat?

Real conversations or a digital popularity contest?

by LYLA YOUNG ★ FEBRUARY 19, 2023

I’m not one for New Year's Resolutions, usually. I have goals I set at the beginning of each year, but I have never used the expression ‘New Year’s Resolution.’ 2023, however, is the year I actually made one, and it’s to delete Snapchat. When I first made friends in college and wanted to keep in touch with them, I asked them for their phone numbers. This left them thunderstruck, as Snapchat is the primary communication source in our generation's minds. 

Snapchat has become the main form of communication between college students and other young crowds. The question ‘what’s your snap?’ is dominating the lingo of college students and young people around the world. Chances are, it’s what you hear when you meet someone for the first time, sometimes before they even begin to tell you about themselves. When someone you’re interested in asks this question, it’s an immediate ick—you may be thinking to yourself, ‘why didn’t they just ask me for my phone number?’ After pondering this, I can’t help but wonder if the younger generation will ever grow out of it. Like anyone my age, I use Snapchat to make plans and keep in touch with my friends, many of whom live in different parts of the country. I have snap streaks, most of which are because I talk to friends every day. I have group chats that happen to be on the app but aren’t anywhere else. Although, with every empty photo I receive of the wall—or, to spice it up, the ceiling—in lieu of a general update on life, an invitation to go out to dinner, or even a Taylor Swift listening party, it makes me wonder what I missed out on living in the digital age. 

Without Snapchat, I feel cut off from many people I might otherwise connect with if I still had the app. Times were different when texting or WhatsApp was the main way to have a conversation. I’m currently binge-watching One Tree Hill, and even though I was born a little before that show came out, it is funny wrapping my head around people in my age range living a life without social media. 

Snapchat private stories have taken the place of updating our friends on the chaos we may get into or general new developments in life. The copious ‘snap streaks’ that are kept immediately give us an illusion of popularity and can reflect the more superficial side of social media; a back-and-forth exchange of half your face or the wall isn’t a real conversation. College is supposedly one of our most significant social experiences, where we meet all kinds of new people worldwide. However, that blank Snapchat exchange makes it difficult to really get to know someone. The thought that you could ‘talk’ to so many people in a given minute, yet some of these people you hardly know, is inconceivable. Like any other form of social media, sending streaks can be addictive, triggering a rush of dopamine in the brain. So, when scientists say excessive social media use is a drug, they really do mean it. Snapping has become a part of our language subconsciously. Before you know it, you are caught in a loop of an echo chamber of dry conversations. Then the cycle repeats itself, and your Snapchat becomes cluttered. But just because Snapchat is one of the most popular apps among Gen Z, that doesn’t mean everyone likes it.

There is a phenomenon of people who use Snapchat daily but would delete the app in a heartbeat. However, they fear that deleting it means losing touch with people who exclusively use the app. So much of this attitude is driven by peer pressure. Deleting Snapchat will show you who your real friends are, a reality as comforting as it is terrifying for some people. When I told my friends I deleted Snapchat, none of them were like, ‘how could you do something like that?’ In fact, quite the opposite. They told me they thought it was a useless app and wish they had the courage to delete it. I don’t consider myself brave for this at all, especially when there has been a rise in the popularity of flip phones among Gen Z’ers who want to break free from social media entirely. This all begs the question of what difference deleting it would make in a mirage of social media apps constantly ripping ideas off of each other.  While I do not know anyone over the age of 21 who uses the app as frequently as teenagers do, given the way Gen Z clings to the medium, it raises the question of whether it will become the new norm. Only time will tell…