Snapchat Connectivity

Originally founded by three Standford fraternity brothers as a disappearing photo and video platform to sext with peers, Snapchat quickly evolved into a popular platform to create and share content with the rest of the world to see. Each month, Snapchat accounts for 360 billion users with approximately three billion snapchats generated per day (O’Connell, 2020). The majority of users are young teenagers and adults aged 18–34. Issues within this demographic arise in marketing and social responses to the platform. It is rather difficult to create ad revenue through Snapchat as the young demographic is much less likely to interact or purchase things advertised on the platform. Unlike the older generations with full time jobs to support spending habits, young users likely do not have much money and use the platform for other reasons. Within social responses, issues arise with online bullying, sexual solicitation, and drug use. The main reason these problems persist is due to the affordance of disappearing content; what is posted on Snapchat will disappear and will not haunt a user later in life.

Snapchat largely allows users to remain in constant contact. Using the platform is quite simple; one creates an account as well as a Bitmoji to be recognized by, they add friends, create “streaks” with friends snapping each other’s content for long periods of time, and posting stories to their page that expire after twenty four hours. One can see a “snap map” of all of their friends locations around the world, send so many snaps that special emojis reside next to friends’ names, interact with music through Shazam, and use the discover page to view content from media outlets or content creators. The platform largely exists to keep users in contact with one another and promote friendship. The features of the app ultimately enable contact and promote a specific form of rhetoric.

Snapchat serves users and serves companies who wish to use the platform to market upon. Rhetoric on the platform is centered around friendship, health-related content, and sexual wellness. These aspects in turn promote gender stereotypes and lead to the advancement of outdated ideals. Snapchat users account for a significant amount of young audiences; these outdated ideals live on within this generation as a platform presents them in such a simple fashion, ingraining them into life. The company is somewhat shortsighted when responding to issues within rhetoric on the platform, as well as rhetoric within the company itself. Over the course of 2020, many brands have changed the way they deal with gender, diversity, and inclusion. At first, CEO Evan Spiegel was not on board, citing that releasing data and practices would contribute to stereotypes about Silicon Valley. Eventually, his mind changed and he decided to make a last ditch effort to include diversity and inclusion information on their platform and company website. Snapchat, completely in line with many of the other platforms, have bias present within the way they are run and it seeps through into the platform.

Within the major rule of writing code and creating algorithms, programmers are told to write what they know. If they have bias present within themselves, it will likely saturate the content they are creating. There is bias present on Snapchat with the function of constant connection, in turn leading to Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). As more users come onto the app, they create the rules. If users decide to bully peers, solicit sex, and sell drugs, others will likely follow suit. There are no affordances on the app that prevent it, they only enhance, especially through the disappearing content function. This leads into power dimensions present on Snapchat and largely other platforms. The power is with the user; they say, do, and create whatever they feel like creating. Where other platforms censor content, Snapchat does not. An interesting power dynamic is created where the company does not hold as much information on users or have a say in what type of content they create as users are free to post their unfiltered (or filtered) lives.

As a company, Snapchat is quite interesting. They’ve lent the power over to users leaving a dent in the company’s profits. They have not made a net profit off of users alone, only through companies in discover channels and advertisements, accounting for 98% of their revenue. Snapchat is a much cheaper platform to advertise on than Twitter, Instagram, and parent Facebook. Snapchat is a distinct, unique platform and their success has been major within the first ten years of existence. Snapchat continues to be one of the leading social media platforms retaining an excellent reputation on the app market. Other platforms have only gotten more complicated, but Snapchat has maintained their simple interface with a goal to provide connection to users.