Launched in 2011 by university students, it is needless to say that it became a popular phenomenon very quickly. I remember throughout primary school everyone had Snapchat. If you didn’t have Snapchat, you didn’t really communicate outside of school. It seemed everyone had it – that is, apart from me. I’ve never used Snapchat, I have never seen the point. We have iMessage and WhatsApp for sending messages, anyway. I was the only one who seemed to think that Snapchat wasn’t the best thing since sliced bread.
But now? No one talks about Snapchat anymore. I don’t know that many people who still use it, and those who still do mainly do so out of habit. When talking to some friends about it, one of them labelled it ‘a flex’ to not use the app. It got me thinking about why Snapchat seems so uncool when it began its reign with immense popularity.
why don’t We see snapchat as useful?
In some ways, it’s easy to see why people aren’t so keen to use Snapchat anymore. I mean, the messages disappear! I’m sure we all have some chats we’d like to see disappear! For the majority though, I’d prefer to keep the messages. Also, why do we need to be messaging people every day? Is it really something to brag about that you have a 100-day snap streak with a friend you hardly talk to in real life? So many people find it anxiety inducing to miss a day of their streak. Maybe that’s the point of the app. People don’t want to miss a day, so they are constantly coming back to it. It becomes guaranteed usage, which will of course benefit the company.
Snapchat also feels like an app you would use in school for keeping in touch in a low effort way. Think middle school – sending lots of ceiling pics just for the sake of it. By the time you leave school, and keeping in touch can be done through coffee dates and phone calls, you’ve outgrown Snapchat and left it behind.
What’s the replacement?
So what’s the replacement? Well, everything, to be honest! Almost every social media app has a chat function – Instagram DMs, Facebook Messenger, Twitter DMs, even TikTok has a private messaging function. As well as the messages, most of these social media platforms can be used to post stories, which was another of Snapchat’s big selling points.
Maybe Snapchat has just been overtaken by the numerous competitors out there. Let’s face it, Snapchat was launched 15 years ago, it’s had a good run, but there are just so many new and exciting apps that are more convenient, fun and newer. Snapchat was something of a novelty for a long time, and now some of the newer apps are having their peak. Maybe it’s a cycle, running through apps until they hit their ten year mark (like Facebook, before us). Maybe in ten years, TikTok will be uncool, and we’ll all be communicating and sharing content through AI! Maybe there will be no social media at all, because we’ve all realised that doomscrolling and constant messaging ruin our brains. Either way, Snapchat seems to be fading into the background and maybe there’s a good reason for that!