By Sarah Cornett – Editor-in-Chief
In 2012, Stanford students Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy designed an app that would change the face of modern communication.
The aptly nicknamed “phantom app” called Snapchat allows users to send photos that will disappear in one to ten seconds. It seems that everyone born after 1990 rejoiced at the new world of picture possibilities. And why not?
Snapchat gives you the chance to send silly and unflattering photos of yourself to your closest friends without any of the awkward consequences.
With Snapchat you can seamlessly communicate your deepest thoughts and emotions through a simple selfie.
It’s safe, it’s simple, it’s fun, and truly everything you could ever want in a social media app. Right? Well, readers, if we are being totally honest with each other then I have something to confess.
My name is Sarah Cornett, and I am a Snapchat hater.
Now, at this point I know all of you are unlocking your iPhones to send a quick snap in disbelief to 100 of your closest friends, but it’s true. I hate Snapchat.
Since the release of the app I’ve been critical and even now with its growing popularity I’m still a hater. Quite frankly I just don’t get it.
The only thing that Snapchat truly allows you to do is send pictures to other Snapchat users.
This same goal can be accomplished by any other cell phone on the market. So why bother?
It seems that the only real purpose of Snapchat is to send the most unflattering selfies as possible.
Rather than send a quick text, or heaven forbid actually pick up the phone and call, we all seem to think that a picture of our duck-faces will suffice.
And this line of thought is what truly bothers me. With our generation already being accused of laziness and an inability to communicate, we can’t let Snapchat be the grotesque example of our age group.
With all of this modern technology and different ways to express our thoughts, we need to stop limiting ourselves to the duck-faces, the creepy beaver-teethed-no-lips-I’m-so-excited, and the look-at-me-with-four-chins-when-I-normally-have-one snaps. We are better than this.
Forbes estimates that 50 million people currently use Snapchat. In other words, that’s 50 million people too busy taking awkward selfies to actually communicate with the world.
Today, we can barely unglue ourselves from our bright little screens to communicate with the people around us. So why add Snapchat to the mix?
Millennials: take a step outside of the Snapchat box and have a real conversation that doesn’t involve any kind of selfie. Let’s show the world that we are better than Snapchat.
They say a picture’s worth a thousand words and lasts a lifetime, but a Snapchat is only worth one line of text and only lasts ten seconds.