Credit: Abby Bergeron

Join WSPN’s Mack Young as she discusses the stressful nature of certain Snapchat features.

While important for social connections, the mechanics of Snapchat can put unnecessary stress on teens. In my experience, the company’s push to gain profit and engagement from its users have led to this app being harmful and a waste of time.

Created in 2011, Snapchat gained popularity almost instantly. This can be credited to it being “different” from other social media sites. Snapchat was branded as more real and connected than any other platform, pushing the image of a truly social media.

“Snapchat is used to keep close friends and family connected in a creative and fun way,” a Snapchat director said. “It’s more authentic than other social medias.”

If this is true, why does Snapchat have all of the inconvenient features that it does? Snapchat is a quick and easy way to communicate with friends through pictures, videos and messages, but aspects of this app make it more stressful and irritating than beneficial.

One issue with Snapchat is the idea of “leaving people on opened.” After you send a message, it will appear as “delivered” until the recipient clicks to “open” the message, at which point you will be able to see that they have viewed it. If somebody views your message or Snap and does not respond, it can be hurtful or lead to stress and anxiety.

“It can be stressful because you’re not sure what they might be doing because they might be judging it,” Wayland High School freshman Francesca Ingwersen said. “Sometimes they just won’t respond at all, and then you get the stress of not being responded to and wonder what you did wrong.”

However, people cannot be expected to respond to a message as soon as they see it. By adding pressure to respond to messages instantaneously, it’s easy to stress people out. This is similar to the iMessage feature “read receipts.” But unlike read receipts, “opened” alerts cannot be turned off, leaving teens to figure out a solution known as “half swiping.”

“Half swiping” is a way of reading a message sent to you without actually alerting the person messaging you. While this may seem foolproof, new updates have started alerting users when they are being “half swiped.” Even though half swiping is a good way to read a message without the pressure of an instant reply — I myself half swipe every message before I open it to know the message I’m going to be answering — it gives off the feeling that a person saw your message and deliberately chose not to open it.

While Snapchat is supposed to help you build connections, it actually increases fear of missing out (FOMO) in some teens with the SnapMap feature. This feature can show where friends are and how long it has been since they were active at any given time. While this can be helpful for meeting up with friends or seeing what people are doing, it can add to stress by allowing users to see who is spending time without them or see who is active and not responding. This creates stressful situations for all parties involved. It’s perfectly normal for teens to spend time without everyone being invited every time, but when you can plainly see it more often, it can increase the hurt behind this discovery.

“That can definitely lead to some hurt feelings,” WHS counseling head Benjamin Buffa said. “There are always going to be situations like that in adolescence, but things like this definitely make it a lot worse.”

So if Snapchat is so stressful, why do teens keep using it? Snapchat has almost become a social necessity, especially when it comes to high school sports teams. Some teens who never had Snapchat have gotten it to be a part of sports group chats in order to find out about psychs, practices and bonding with their team. And yes, Snapchat can be a good way to communicate and connect with friends and teammates alike, but this is also just another way that makes it hard to delete Snapchat.

“[Especially] in middle school, Snapchat was a big deal and there were many group chats I wasn’t in because I didn’t have it,” sophomore Maereg Million said.

Another unnecessary addition to Snapchat are “streaks,” a feature that tells you how many days in a row users have sent each other Snaps. Depending on a user’s notification setting, users can also get notifications when your streak is about to run out. Because of this, users are spending time on Snapchat every day to keep their streaks up. The more people you have streaks with, the more of a chore it feels like to keep them going.

Personally, I have found Snapchat to be beneficial in some cases but unneeded and stressful in most others. While it can be a fun way of communicating with friends, Snapchat has unnecessary features that — although intended for increasing engagement from teens — I wish the app ditched completely. If Snapchat excluded features that harmed teens both mentally and socially instead of chasing after profit, the app would be a much more fun, connected and “creative” way to talk to friends and family.