The Effects of Snapchat: A Personal Experience Paper (Essay Sample)

Students Name:
Institutions Name:
Course Name:
Submission Date:
The Effects of Snapchat: A Personal Experience
Technology has changed the way the world conducts business and also the way people interact. With the advancement in technology, no longer is time and distance a hindrance to communication. The Internet has helped to break down these barriers and connect people of diverse cultures across the globe to interact both in social and commercial contexts. With social media platforms such Facebook, Whatsapp, Linked-in, Skype and Snapchat, people sharing interests have been connected across continents. In essence, social media is the new frontier of communication in our current time and as technology changes, it should be expected that newer platforms will come about (Information Resources Management Association 11).
Choosing not to use the platforms tantamount to effective isolation from the rest of the world that has embraced it—which involves a significant number of people. Therefore, in spite of its limitations, social media is still a formidable tool for modern day networking (Information Resources Management Association 11). In this discourse, I shall therefore, examine how the use of SnapChat has affected me. I look at both the positive and the negative effects of using this social media platform. In conclusion, I give some recommendations that fellow users could take into account to maximize the positive aspects of the social media platform and the measures to take to minimize its negative effects.
The Positive Effects of SnapChat
Snapchat is a free mobile phone application that is used to share photos and videos. Whatever photos or videos that are shared disappear in less than 10 seconds. According to Bayera et al., Snapchat is an excellent innovation that can stimulate creative playfulness between friends and family members thereby helping them to share the glimpses of the big and small events of their daily lives (5). I find this social media platform quite convenient when it comes to catching up and connecting with my friends. With the app, I am able to keep tabs on what my friends are doing and get a feeling of where they are. Snapchat enables me to hear the “hellos” of my friends in the morning, the first thing when I turn on my phone. It gets my days on a jolly groove most of the time. My fiancé, aware of my preoccupation with stuff am engaged in at a particular moment, is fond of sending me reminders: she takes videos of herself reminding me of where I need to go either with her or by myself.
Snapshots can also help you find your way in case you have lost direction in an unfamiliar location. Once visiting a friend in Boston, I lost my way and I sent him photos of where I was; the pictures of buildings that I presumed could be landmarks. It so happened that I was in their neighborhood and seeing the photos that I sent him, he was able to locate me. Between call and more Snapshot communications, we were able to meet shortly later. With Snapshot, I was also able to consult with my brother once when he went to Paris on vacation. I needed shoes and had sent him some money to facilitate the purchase but when he went to a shoe shop, he could not get his mind to make a pick of what he thought would satisfy me. He sent me a couple pairs of shoes that he thought were exotic and when I needed a second look I sent him a message requesting him to resend. In this way, he was able to buy me what I would have bought for myself if I were I with him in Paris.
The other positive thing about using the app is that it does not consume the space on my phone as compared to other social media platforms such as Whatsapp. For example, when a picture is opened in Whatsapp it is directly downloaded to the phones memory; therefore, the more you preview photos the less your phone memory becomes. This is not the case with Snapchat. This is because the photos and videos that I receive are deleted soon after I have opened them; I therefore have the same amount of memory as before I received the picture on my device. In this way, Snapchat encourages its users to share as many pictures as possible.
The Negative Effects of SnapChat
What scares me most about SnapChat is the illusion that it creates in the sense that all the information that is shared through the platform disappears within a short period of time. This impression is solidified by the fact that the sender is notified if the receiver takes a screen shot of any photos that is sent. There are, however, hacks who can allow one to take a screen shot and even save a video without the sender getting any notification (Bayera et al. 19). Before, I was a fun of sending love messages to my ex- fiancé. Well, I never went to the crazy extent of taking nude photos of myself, which I consider uncouth anywhere. However, the messages we exchanged were quite intimate and I would not want unconcerned people to ever get hold of it.
Worse still, I live in the fear that my ex could have stored that information and can one day choose to use it to spoil the current relationship that I am having. This fear is reinforced by Poltash (6) who asserts that social media is neither ephemeral nor private. He argues that anything we email, post and/or text can actually end up anywhere and that anything one does on the social media can actually last forever. I am now very careful when sharing any information on Snapchat, whatever the intention of the communication. As a future job seeker, I am careful to post videos or photos that that best portray my image as a responsible human being.
Another thing that I find worrisome about the Snapchat is the requirement that the user must agree to grant the apps’ administrators the access of their personal address book. This enables the administrators to upload that personal information into their servers. The users, therefore, give away the private contact information about their family and friends withou...