I used to spend a good portion of my day tapping away at my phone screen, taking quick glances at the lives of others on Snapchat, but I didn't realize how much that was affecting me.

Initially, I thought Snapchat was one of the greatest apps ever invented. Being able to share glimpses of your life with your friends and them reciprocating while experimenting with location and selfie filters was such a brilliant and novel idea. I used to be able to maintain streaks that went over 200 days without being broken, and I considered that a personal achievement.

However, as time went on and the more I used Snapchat, the more I felt as if it was becoming monotonous and sending streaks became tedious. I received the same good morning, good afternoon, and good night snaps day after day, and I felt as if I was growing more distant from my friends. We were keeping our streaks alive simply for the sake of avoiding that dreaded hourglass emoji. At that point, Snapchat was becoming a chore.

Soon, I was beginning to compare my life to the lives of others. I saw plenty of people on Snapchat, acquaintances that I've probably met once or twice, eating lavishly at who knows where, raving to excessively loud music, and vacationing at the most beautiful tourist destinations. Because of this, I often say to myself: why can't that me be? I've seen too many times videos of people snapping videos of their food along with who they're eating with. I tried to mimic this, posting on my story whenever I was at a restaurant or whenever I was with a large group of friends. I wanted others to think that I was having fun, too. I was so focused on trying (too hard in fact) to make my life appear as if it were the ideal.

I realized that Snapchat was influencing how I felt about myself. It made me want to live someone else's life, and I kept worrying about what others were doing when I should have been focusing on my own life. Recently, I made the decision to delete Snapchat. Yes, it was difficult to hit that delete button because there were a handful of people that I really enjoyed snapping on there, and I had a few streaks there were about to hit 100 again, but it's for the better.

It's been about a week since I've deleted Snapchat, but my fingers still tend to click on the spot on my phone where the app once was. It's weird to have an empty slot there, but it's an emptiness that I'm not mad about. In fact, it's the exact void that I'm working on to fill right now with something else - something that will help me focus myself back on me.