Today’s younger generation revolves around sexuality and promiscuity, or at least in my mind, it does. This is why I believe Snapchat is such a fad nowadays. We pride ourselves on sending others pictures of our bodies and getting admiration in return of the image. We think that this is all “okay” because the image disappears within up to ten seconds. The catch: it is very easy to screenshot the images received. The even bigger catch: whatever is posted on someone’s Snapchat story is available to be seen by any of their friends for a full 24 hours. What’s scary about this is that any of those people can screenshot any of the images on that person’s story. That’s what’s so dangerous about Snapchat; one seemingly harmless image can turn consequential in seconds.
Snapchat appeared when I was in high school, if you didn’t have it, you weren’t in on all the gossip or funny things people posted on the app. I remember my junior year of high school, at prom, the Snapchat stories were absolutely horrific. There were pictures of girls passed out on floors, videos of people walking in on others having sex, and videos of people throwing up posted online. What’s crazier than that, is that people thought it was okay to post something as such; this was because the stories go away within 24 hours of being posted. But, I made sure I was never in or posted such things, because someone could have screenshotted the picture and saved it. The videos are harder to save for your own, but the pictures can be saved at any time. This is how rumors can be started. Say one person saw the picture and screenshotted it, now he or she can send it to all of his or her friends, and now twenty-ish people have seen it. Now, think about it, if one person sent it to their friends, now all of those friends are going to send it to all of their friends. Next thing we know, the entire school knows about what happened in the picture. People would then start rumors about whomever was in the picture, and soon that person would either be in serious trouble or have self-esteem problems because of what’s being spread about them.
Something else that I remember from high school was a girl, whose name I will not mention, sent a topless picture to a boy in our school. He then screenshotted this picture and sent it to all of his friends, who then sent it to all of their friends, and just like before, the entire school had seen it in just a few days. This girl was constantly ambushed by her ‘friends’ showing her the raunchy picture of herself, which inevitably made her feel exploited. Eventually, the drama of her picture going around died down, and people forgot about it. However, I can guarantee that people out there still have his picture on their phones. It’s crazy how one picture can spread like wildfire and make a girl be completely closed off from everything due to it.
Snapchat is definitely one of the most scary apps someone can use as a teenager or twenty-something. It can spread rumors, pornography, and images of illegal actions. I say, if one is going to use Snapchat, he or she should steer clear of sexual or illegal images; keep the pictures of your face or something around you, rather than it being of something one can get in trouble for.
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