It has recently been brought to my attention that not many adults in older generations know how to use Snapchat. I was beyond baffled. Who doesn't know how to use Snapchat? You just hit the circle button and boom. It's done.
But that's not what they didn't understand. Obviously they knew how to take pictures and send them to people in their contacts. They don't know why we Snapchat. This concept is absurd to them. They don't get the purpose of Snapchat. And I, coming from a generation where this is a mundane concept, tried to explain it to my uncle and found it to be much harder than I originally imagined it being.
"Uh, well, you take the picture and send it to whoever you want, but it is only there ten seconds. You have friends just like Facebook and when you want all of your friends to see something you put it on your story and it is there for 24 hours. It's kind of like a game, you have streaks and don't even let me get into what that is."
Sorry, what was that? What is a story? Why does it last 24 hours and other pictures only last 10 seconds? Why do you want all of your friends to see a picture of you? Why are we so obsessed with people knowing what we are doing at all times? So much so that we send up to 30 pictures of ourselves to others within a couple of minutes. Texting isn't enough anymore. I need visual confirmation of my friends faces every day. But I've decided to try and explain this absurd concept, here, in this article so, keep reading my friends.
The Home/Opening Screen
Snapchat opens to a pretty basic camera screen. There are three buttons at the top and three at the bottom. Starting with the top left is the flash, simple enough. The top middle is a pull down screen of your profile. You can edit your name and your picture in the little ghost icon. You can also see your friends and who has recently added you on this screen. The top right button switches the camera the opposite direction, you can also do this by double tapping on your screen. The bottom left button brings you to the left screen where you can see all of your sent and received Snapchats. The bottom middle button is the button you take the picture with. The bottom right is the right screen where you see your friends stories. The home screen is simple enough, right?
Sent/Received Snapchat Screen
This can be located by clicking the bottom left button on the home screen or swiping the home screen right. This is also where you view all of your Snapchats. To view a Snapchat you simply click the name that sent you the Snapchat. The filled in red square next to their name should turn from a red square to just an outline of the square after you view it. All of the Snapchats that you have sent out have a triangle to the left of their names. If they have viewed the Snapchat it is an outline of the triangle but if they haven't looked at it yet, then it's still a full red triangle. There is a little bit more to this screen once you get good at Snapchat, but it's nothing we need to go into now.
Story Screen
This screen can be accessed by swiping the home screen left of clicking on the lower right button. This screen is where your story is (if you have on posted) and where you view others' stories. This is also where you can read news stories. News outlets like People Magazine, ESPN, CNN, National Geographic, Cosmopolitan and many more have articles you can view from this page. You view a story or an article by tapping the story once. This is the most entertaining of the three pages and why many people use the app in general. Which leads me to my next point.
The Purpose
This is what seems to be confusing to people like my uncle and my grandparents and even my parents. They don't understand why we use Snapchat. They don't get the purpose. And to be completely honest, I don't really think there is one. We use Snapchat so we know what people are doing at all times. We need to make sure that we know what our friends are doing, even if we were never really that close. I like knowing how people I went to high school with are doing, regardless of whether or not it's good or bad. We use it as a modern news outlet. My little sister loves the Buzzfeed story on Snapchat. She doesn't even have to go to the Buzzfeed app anymore, she can just go to Snapchat and get the highlights of the app. Companies have figured out how to use Snapchat and target younger generations. There is a Food Network story on Snapchat that is crazy interesting. I would never actually read a Food Network magazine. But I will watch their Snapchat video of someone making delicious food and telling me how to do it and telling me to check their website for all of the ingredients. Snapchat is all about keeping people up to date and keeping them in the know. My generation likes to know what's going on in the world and with their friends and in the fastest time possible and Snapchat provides us with that.
