Snapchat – a social media app that allows you to send photos, videos, and messages within seconds to anyone around the world. Snapchat – a social media app that shows when someone chooses not to answer you even when they’re online. Snapchat – a social media app that has positioned our generation and ruined the chance of forming a real connection with another person.
Today, many teenagers use Snapchat as their main form of communication. Through this app they use their devices to send photos, videos, and texts (or chats) back and forth throughout the day, and sometimes night. Snapchat allows for instant and easy communication with anyone around the world. How could that be a bad thing?
Unfortunately, many teenagers already feel compelled to hide behind their screens. Snapchat increases this tendency because all posted communication disappears within 24 hours. Knowing their words, photos, or videos will disappear within the app may embolden teens to post without worrying about the consequences. The disappearance of these photos, videos, chats, and posts inspires teens to say and send things they would never send under normal circumstances. Teens seem to feel a disconnect with words they have written once those words disappear, and this is really a massive issue in high schools.
“Screenager” is a term commonly used to refer to teens, and sadly it fits. Today, teenagers would rather send “snaps” back and forth all day and night, knowing that they will disappear, instead of speaking to one another at school or making plans to see one another in person. Most times, the relationships formed on Snapchat do not even involve having conversations; but rather simply sending photos back and forth to one another. In these instances, teens spend time sending random photos of themselves or their surroundings, almost as if photo journaling their day or night. Then, when these same teenangers are confronted with the person they are “snapping” back and forth with in real life – they refuse to speak to them.
This refusal to speak to someone a person had been “snapping” the night before is ridiculous and must be stopped. The culture that teens have created with new terms used to define relationships like “talking to someone” must be stopped as well, especially since half of these people are not actually speaking in person.
The phrase “talking to someone” is used to describe the phase (which should actually be called dating) before two people are in a committed relationship. Teenagers today do not like labels and they want an easy way out of commitment to someone else, hence the birth of the phrase. Being in the “talking stage” allows teens to feel as though they have the perks of dating and being in a relationship without the label. The lack of a label allows teens to feel they are not really committed since loyalty is a thing to be avoided for many teenagers. Loyalty among teens is at an all-time low since apps like Snapchat allow for teenagers to quickly and easily communicate with multiple people at once. This allows someone who is in a “talking stage” to “talk” to multiple people at a time, knowing their texts, photos, and videos will be deleted within a 24 hour period of time.
Junior, Jessica Liu had this to say about dating today, “There are so many guys who use Snapchat to talk to multiple girls at once, but they don’t have the nerve to approach a girl in real life. It’s honestly embarrassing that they have to hide behind their phones.”
It would be a great experiment to take away phones from high school students for a few weeks. It would force teens to communicate with one-another in person. Want to go to lunch? Talk about it. Want to meet up after school? Ask the other person if they are available. Need help with a homework assignment? Plan to get together to study. One can only imagine how big of an impact this would have. Any takers?
