SAN FRANCISCO: For 13-year-old Coral Fairchild, Snapchat trumps old-style text messaging as the way to socialize with friends in the mobile Internet age.
The northern California girl adds moustaches to faces in pictures or speech bubbles using touch-screen features that allow people to draw on Snapchat images being sent. “You can take a regular selfie and customise it into a princess or a unicorn or whatever you want,” she explained. “It’s just a more fun way to communicate.”
But if the message turns out to be too embarrassing, no problem. It will disappear in seconds. The Southern California-based service has gained notoriety for the app that lets people send smartphone photos or video snippets timed to self-destruct 10 seconds or less after being opened.
Snapchat has rocketed to popularity since the initial app was released in September of 2011. Its growth initially sparked fears that, in a world of selfies, it would provide a false sense of security for teenagers thinking of sexting risque photos.
That concern appears unfounded, according to Matthew Johnson, director of education at Canadian not-for-profit digital literacy organisation MediaSmarts. “There is no evidence that Snapchat is being used any more recklessly than any other message service,” Johnson said. “Young people expect their friends and peers to do the right thing and rely on social pressure when it goes wrong,” he continued, citing research done by MediaSmarts.
Conversations based on ephemeral images also reduce the potential for misunderstanding by providing expressions and other visual cues absent in email or basic text messages, according to Johnson. “Many adults can relate to reading an email and not knowing whether the person who sent it was being angry or sarcastic,” he said.
Along with providing pictures, typically selfies showing expressions, the mere fact someone is using Snapchat usually sends a signal that they are being playful and not serious, according to Johnson. “Snapchat is essentially one big Smiley,” he said, referring to a well-known happy-face emoticon.
Snapchat recently added a “Stories” feature that strings together a series of “snaps” to create a narrative that is available for repeated viewing by recipients for 24 hours.
But even with though the messages disappear, it is quite easy to copy Snapchat messages or pictures before they vanish, and research shows that young people are aware of that, according to Johnson.
AFP
