Snapchat and
Facebook: Why the App and Website are So Popular Among High School and College
Students
The following post is
from the perspective of young people themselves....enjoy!
Since its popularity surge with
teenagers in the 2000s, Facebook has steadily been a popular website for social
use among high school and college students. Nowadays, with the rise of smart
phones and the abundance of apps to download, Snapchat seems to have made its
way to one of the most used and most popular smart phone apps among teenagers
and young adults. Together, Facebook and Snapchat dominate the way young adults
socialize and behave among each other.
Child Therapy Chicago conducted an
informal survey of the
websites and apps high school and college students prefer to use in their free
time. Students from a local Chicago high school as well as students from a
Chicago university were surveyed. These students were asked a variety of
questions ranging from what their favorite website and app is to explaining why
they prefer these social media platforms.
Snapchat
First created in 2011, Snapchat is
an app where users can send and share photos and videos to a list of friends.
Photos or videos — called “snaps”
— are sent directly to a friend on a user’s friend list. The user who sends the
snap can choose how long their friends can view the snap, ranging from 1 to 10
seconds. After the snaps are opened, they are deleted by Snapchat and cannot be
viewed again (however, there are some exceptions to this mentioned later).
Among the variety of apps students wrote as their preferred
app, Snapchat was the popular answer. The app was more favored among the
surveyed high school students than the college students. Of the 29 high school
students surveyed, 14 wrote Snapchat as their favorite app to use in their free
time. Of the 14 college students surveyed, no one wrote Snapchat as their
favorite.
Why is Snapchat popular among young students? The answer
might lie with Snapchat’s “impermanence” feature, where those snaps sent to
them by a friend “self-destruct” and cannot be viewed again. All users must
create a username and have the ability to link their real name to their
profile. However, even with those features, students sometimes have the false
belief that nothing is permanent and all photos and videos sent through
Snapchat will disappear forever. Users may experience a sense of “deindividuation,” a psychological term meaning: the
tendency of people to engage in atypical behavior when stripped of their usual
identities. Users might feel inclined to take pictures of parties they are
attending, what they’re eating & drinking, who they are spending time with
or — as some of my own friends have done in the past — take pictures or videos
of alcohol consumption because they don't think the "evidence" will
last.
Recently, Huffington Post wrote an
article about the apps parents of teens should watch out for. Snapchat was on
their list of the top 12 apps. “Users think their snaps will disappear and they are wrong. It's actually
pretty easy to recover a Snap, take a screenshot of it and share it with others,”
Ann Brenoff, the writer of the article, said.
This is not to say that Snapchat is
evil and all parents should snatch their teens' phones away if they see the app on their home page.
Snapchat may be this generation’s new way of convenient communication. In the
informal survey we conducted, students were asked why they prefer their
favorite app. One high school student’s response speaks for many across the
survey and possibly the nation: “Snapchat = texting.” It’s simple: a 10-second
snap with a word limit can be all you need to keep a nice conversation going.
Let’s not forget that Snapchat also has enabled direct messaging between friends
with no word limit.
There are other reasons why Snapchat
is a favorite among the high
school students surveyed and that includes: “It keeps me updated on [what] my
friends are interested in and what they’re up to;” "The app also features
different mini articles that are entertaining;” “It keeps me updated socially
as well as informs me on what my friends are doing.”
So, while Snapchat has it concerning
issues, it might be the next generations' Facebook.
Facebook
Facebook has been around since 2004,
and it is the easiest way to connect with friends and family around the world.
Users can share photos, statuses, videos, direct message friends and much more.
As one of the college students put it: “[Facebook]
helps me connect with people and see what they
are up to when I can't text or call them.”
However, another college student
uses Facebook differently. “As
bad as it sounds, I learn some things from Facebook, mainly from articles. I
really only use Facebook for the articles and to connect with certain people.” She
included in the survey that she uses Facebook for “Personal, Political and
Social reasons.”
Back during my middle school years,
things were different. Facebook was extremely popular among middle school and
high school students. Back then, I remember seeing countless statuses where a
friend was simply telling
their followers what they’re doing. Nowadays, there is rarely a status seen on
my “News Feed,” or homepage. Everything evolves, and so Facebook evolved as
well. Things are more political and visual now. There are more videos
circulating, most of which are short, funny and entertaining-to-watch.
So why is Facebook still popular
among the older students who were surveyed versus the younger? It may be quite
simple: we grew up with Facebook, so we’ll
stay with Facebook. That’s not to say college students aren’t using Snapchat or
other apps and websites. But Facebook was part of our teen years where we
interacted among our friends from school. This is most likely the reason
Facebook created the “Timeline” feature where someone can look back through
their Facebook profile through the past years since they’ve been a member (I
cannot tell you how many times my old friends from middle school look through
Timeline and comment on old photos and statuses).
The takeaway is this: time goes by
and nothing really remains the same. Facebook and its users evolved. Newer and
better things are released. According to the survey, it seems that each
generation prefers the app or website they grew up with. A majority of the college students have stuck with
Facebook and the high school students prefer the newer and emerging apps like
Snapchat. What's next??
Post
by: Raul España, College Psychology Student Intern
