SnapChat is one of the fastest growing apps in recent years. With an average of 9,000 snaps per second and eight billion snap videos viewed per day it's safe to say America has a slight obsession with this new social media app. But how is this social media outlet affecting our lives? SnapChat has created a way to instantly update everyone you know with essentially a live feed of your life. This is awesome, right? Think again.
SnapChat has just worsened our society's social media envy, especially with the addition of the My Story feature. Social media sites were started with the idea of updating friends and family on your life and reading updates from people you haven't seen in a while. But now, it has become a new way to show off and make other people jealous. FOMO, or fear of missing out, has exploded thanks to sites like Facebook, Instagram and most recently, SnapChat.
This creates a game of social comparison on all these sites, with all of us trying to out-do the others. But social media isn't a game so there is no winning, which just leads to everyone feeling inadequate, ashamed, and worthless. So why do we continue to do it?
SnapChat makes it possible to see what everyone else we know is doing in real time. So Friday night when you are stuck at home with the flu or studying or just hanging out alone, you get to see how all of your "friends" are out having the time of their life on their My Story. Or better yet you see all your bffs out together and you never got the invite. You think you must not be cool enough, you feel embarrassed and like you're missing out, when in reality you were doing what you wanted to do by staying in in the first place.
What about when you are out having a great time? You grab your phone and snap every second of it, just to spend the rest of the night incessantly checking to see how many people and who has viewed your My Story. Now are you really having the time of your life while you check yet another app on your phone? And think about the people you are with. If you are on your phone the whole time how do you think that makes them feel? Certainly not good.
So my question remains: why do we do this to ourselves? We only perpetuate our own feelings of low-self-worth and not being good enough compared to our peers. Is the thrill of knowing that that guy or girl saw that you're out at the bars worth all of this? Is making that girl you don't like feel a twinge of jealous really making you feel any better? All SnapChat really has become is a toxic social media app. This is why I have decided to delete my personal SnapChat for the next month. Hopefully this will allow me to be happier with my life and more present in it.
