Ah, snap streaks. To a lot of millennials and gen Zs, this little phrase holds a huge meaning. You earn a snap streak when you send direct snaps back and forth with a friend for several consecutive days. Streaks are represented with a flame emoji and number.

Social media has become such a dominant and overwhelming presence in how we interact in this day and age, and Snapchat has been at the forefront of this notion. Millions of teens use Snapchat every day and, as a result, have become obsessive over snap streaks.

Every morning when they wake up they feel the pressure to respond to the ~15 people they have streaks with, sometimes just sending a picture of their desk with the caption "streaks". Or if they are going on vacation out of the country and will not have access to WiFi, they will give one of their friend's control of their Snapchat account to maintain their streaks.

Teens also view snap streaks as representative of a relationship, and this is extremely problematic because no human, face-to-face interaction has to be involved with Snapchat.

Snap streaks have made Snapchat feel like a job, and so many individuals equate so much meaning with them. If one of their friends accidentally breaks the streak, they will be angry with them or go so far to contact Snapchat's corporate office and beg for them to return the streak.

Personally, I only have streaks with people who I genuinely want to communicate with. If you asked me a year ago how many streaks I had, I would have said around 12; now I only have 5.

By having numbers play a role in Snapchat is yet another example of how social media, self-worth, and communication is becoming measured in shallow and quantitative ways.

Snapchat should simply be a fun way to communicate with your friends.

So I say, stop focusing on streaks. Stop snapping people who you feel obligated to snap and just focus on building up and fostering the relationships you truly care about.