Most colleges now have a Snapchat story/account. This account is run by a student member who takes snaps that are sent to the account and posts them to the account's story. This story is then viewed, ideally, only by members of the student body.
Recently, the UCLA Snapchat story has been all over social media. This account shows many students drinking alcohol, smoking weed, taking edibles and/or acid, nudity, and pictures of people during/after sexual activities. This account has gained popularity and has been viewed by students at Stanford, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, Cal Poly SLO, and more.
Snapchat is prominently known as a site to share what you’re doing with people who you have added on the site. While it works in a similar way to Facebook, the main difference is you can see who screenshots your images and you can only make them visible for certain time lengths. People use this site to send nude pictures to others knowing that it will only be seen for a certain length of time. However, with the UCLA Snapchat account (and others like it) this is no longer the case. People fail to realize that sending a photo that includes their faces to this account and then having it posted on the story now makes that photo capable to be screenshot by the thousands of people that view that accounts story. They also have no way of knowing who screenshots their images. That means the photos of these students doing drugs or underage drinking may not be published on the Internet forever.
While that itself is terrifying, what is even worse is the images of girls that are being taken during or after they engage in sexual activities. These girls may not have consented to having their image be posted to this story, yet it now is. These girls now have their nude photos that most of the time includes their faces on the Internet for thousands to see. These images often include what sexual act just occurred and often are used to degrade the girl in the photo. These girls have no idea that their image is being shared amongst not only students of UCLA but also students of many other campuses.
Most people heard about this Snapchat account from Yik Yak, an anonymous site where people can post whatever they want and remain anonymous while receiving upvotes or downvotes (5 downvotes means the ‘yak’ is deleted). When talking about this account however, the posts are often demeaning towards the girls in the posts. While, yes, if the girls chose to have their image be on that site it is one thing. However, very few are realizing that these images may have come from non-consenting girls.
The other main problem is that these students are posting their images on this account and failing to realize the repercussions that it may have. They will not know who screenshot their image and shares it amongst their friends or social media followers. Their image could be spread to hundreds of people beyond just the thousands that are viewing the Snapchat story.
