How many instances can we recall of adults questioning us about the amount of time we spend on social media? After all, it seems many of us would rather live our lives through the medium of a 6-inch screen than earnestly interact with those physically around us.
In my formative years of elementary and secondary schooling, Snapchat and Instagram were two of the most frequently mentioned sites among my peers. At that time, I abstained from engaging with these apps, feeling as if I was somehow rejecting adolescent temptations by avoiding social media and the harms that it held. However, over this last summer, I finally capitulated.
I, a 20-year-old college student, gave in to a friend’s insistence that I join the world of social media after years of what I termed “social media sobriety.” His reasoning was simple: I didn’t have Snapchat while his other friends did, so I should join to keep in touch.
In the process, I discovered much of why my peers often seemed to be mentally absent, checking their phones with ritualistic frequency that I’m sure their parents wish they had spent instead on educational endeavors.
Once I began using Snapchat, I noticed something deeply troubling about myself. I became anxious whenever a friend would leave my message unread for just a few minutes, feeling as if I needed their instantaneous response to receive some sort of relief. I suffered from anticipation anxiety over their response or even feared they might miss my message.
These social media apps prey on the psyche of young children and adults by playing into fears of missing out, not being as good as others and of losing connections entirely.
Streaks were supposedly Snapchat’s best known feature, and while I had some vague idea of what they were, I had no idea how they worked. A friend of mine — the same one who got me into Snapchat in the first place — told me that we should try to become one of each other’s best friends on Snapchat, and that to do so, we should work on creating a “Snap streak.” I was intrigued and subsequently agreed to his plan.
Over the next 59 days and counting we have continued our Snap streak, with me realizing that 59 days is next to nothing. It seems silly to me that the number next to your name is somehow indicative of how good a friend you are with that person. It suggests that if you miss a day and lose the streak, you clearly just didn’t care enough.
Snapchat claims that to keep a streak, you and the other person must send a Snap within 24 hours of your last Snap. This means that if you sent a Snap at, say, 10 a.m. on Tuesday, then you would need to send another by 10 a.m. on Wednesday to keep your streak. However, streaks often stay alive for many hours after they are supposed to end, and Snapchat seems to keep the real time purposefully unclear to encourage worry about streaks and activity on the app itself. Not to mention the fact that you can simply pay to restore your lost streak.
This is not to say that all of Snapchat is bad. Streaks do encourage communication with people that you may otherwise not have contact with on a daily basis. When both parties want this daily level of contact, it can be great. However, nobody is meant to talk to the same person every single day in perpetuity — absence makes the heart grow fonder, after all.
While I could talk about the positives of staying in touch with my friends from afar, I cannot do so in good conscience. The net effects of using social media, at least on me, have been clearly negative, and I fear this is the case with the general public.
University of British Columbia Professor Derrick Wirtz studied the effects of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram on people’s well-being. He found that the greater the usage of social media, the lower the level of well-being subjects reported. While Snapchat wasn’t included in the study, the conclusions still apply.
Although my observations are mostly personal in nature, I believe they tell a deeper story of how social media apps like Snapchat can be dangerous, especially to children who need real connection. If my recent experiences with social media taught me anything, it is that I made the right choice in avoiding social media as a young and impressionable kid.
I will admit, I do not plan to stop using social media. While I would not recommend it to those who have successfully avoided it, I urge all of us who do use it to ask ourselves: Is it really worth sacrificing so much of our lives to apps designed to divert our attention and make us feel worse about ourselves?
I understand the irony in critiquing social media while being an active user. My hope is that this apparent contradiction can spotlight our often complex and difficult relationship with platforms like Snapchat. Social media can connect us to others, but in doing so, it more often than not serves as a distraction, making it challenging for many of us to strike a healthy balance. I hope to encourage a more thoughtful approach to social media use while acknowledging the pitfalls that many of us, including myself, grapple with in finding that balance.
Platforms like Snapchat are engineered to hook us, pulling our focus away from what truly matters — real connections and real life. While quitting entirely is not realistic for everyone, re-evaluating our relationship with social media and its impact on our mental health is an essential step toward a healthier, more fulfilling social life.
