Snapchat is an app that many people have had for years and although many teenagers can agree that it’s time consuming and toxic, we can all agree that we aren’t deleting it any time soon. It has many features that keep you wanting to stay. Snapchat memories are one of my favorite things. I love looking back at what I was doing in years past and seeing how much I’ve changed, or remembering funny situations I was in. I also love being able to video call friends who might not have iphones. That way, I can conveniently call them and have long conversations face to face. However, there’s several things in Snapchat that get in the way of the benefits.

Stories

Of course, Snapchat stories are awesome to watch. Only if they’re friends. Even then, I find myself clicking through endless snaps of sunsets, happy birthday wishes and trips people are going on. Usually, I don’t stay to see what people are doing and I click through them just to get them off of my page. Of course, I do enjoy private stories of my friends, because it’s very interesting to see what they have going on, but I don’t think that stories are interesting when they don’t matter to me.

Snap Scores

Snap Scores are one of my least favorite features on Snapchat, solely for the reason that they are obsessive and consuming. Every single time an individual sends a video or photo chat on Snapchat, their snap score will go up one point. I’ve been in several situations where I will check people’s snap scores often in fear that they may be ignoring me when they are clearly active. Another reason why snap scores can be damaging is by others being unwilling to talk to someone based on the number of their snap score. Personally, I’ve had moments where I’m afraid to talk to a person who added me because their snap score is really low or really high. If there were no snap scores, people would be more willing to talk to someone to get a better first impression.

Unspoken rules

Snapchat is an odd app. There’s so many weird rules that people have made up that almost control the way they talk to people on the app. Some of them include:

• Not responding to people right away 

Many people on the app think that you have to wait a certain amount of minutes to respond to a chat, which is so exhausting. When asking a direct question to someone who had just responded to me a minute prior, sometimes I have to wait up to a few hours for them to respond because they don’t want to seem like they’re hovering in the chat.

• Informality

Of course, it’s good to have an app that’s more on the informal side, but sometimes that can be frustrating. People will open your chats without responding, send photos of their ceiling back and forth or leave chats delivered and never open them again.

Streaks

Streaks are snapchats sent back and forth between individuals for a consecutive amount of days. For a while, I thought that streaks were something of value, but as I got into highschool I realized that there really is no point in them. I’m still not exactly sure why people do them, other than to raise their snap score.

Overall, there are many complaints I have about Snapchat. It’s an app of very many pointless features that just add to the lack of reason for it to be around. Again, I won’t be deleting it very soon, but I think it’s time to take a step back from it and realize it’s problems too.