I’m trying to write this article, and I can’t seem to put down my phone. No, I’m not texting. Instead, I’m sending ridiculous selfies with silly filters to my friends.
With the recent updates and time spent on this app, I’m finally coming to terms with the fact that I am addicted to Snapchat.
Four years ago, Snapchat was launched, but didn’t start to grab anyone’s attention until the winter of 2012. When the app first came out, I thought it was a waste of time. “Why Snapchat when you could text?” I always thought. The trouble of switching between the two apps was too much for me.
Flash forward a year and a half, and Snapchat still held tightly onto the hearts of tech savvy teens. Now people could post “snap stories” so all of their friends can see what they were up to at any given moment. This update drove me further away from the app, because I wasn’t exactly sure how the “stories” worked, and didn’t want to accidentally upload one.
Over the past few months, Snapchat has crept into my everyday life, and now I honestly cannot go twenty minutes without it.
Trying to think back on how it happened, I would have to blame the update in April 2015, that allowed people to earn “snap streaks.” A Snapchat streak is signified by a fire emoji and the number of days you have been sending and receiving Snapchats from one person.
These streaks are a big deal, and losing one is an even bigger deal.
This past summer I lost my phone and the first thing I cared about was my longest Snapchat streak, which was over 100 days. For the next week I signed into my friends phones and used my iPad to ensure that I kept the streak alive. It’s pathetic, I know, but I couldn’t help myself.
Now Snapchat has added yet another new feature in order to keep the selfies interesting. Users can hold down on their face before sending a picture using the front facing camera in order to apply an animation.
Some of these filters include: heart eyes, throwing up a rainbow, and my personal favorite, two cross-eyed eyeballs. These filters cause me to go into fits of laughter when they glitch (I think that they’re better when they’re not working the right way).
A few people may have noticed that there was yet another addition to the Snapchat emoji family this past weekend.
The two new emojis added were a baby and a star. The baby signifies a new snap friend, and the star is a bit more complicated.
If my friend was to send me a snapchat and I replayed it, everyone who is friends with my friend on Snapchat would have a star next to her name.
I think this emoji is unnecessarily complicated, and doesn’t really add much to the Snapchat experience.
A lesser known fact about the most recent update is that it allows you to change the emojis that are used in the app.
Say your favorite emoji is the little bird in the egg. Well you could replace the traditional smiley face or the smirking face with the little bird.
Snapchat is also charging customers if they want to be able to replay more than one snap per day. A little ridiculous if you ask me.
Although Snapchat has its flaws, I don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon. Frankly, I don’t want it to.