Snapchat is one of the world’s most popular social media platforms, with 414 million daily active users and $4.6 billion in annual revenue according to a 2023 Q4 Snap Inc. earnings call. With such a powerful platform, it’s worth looking at the influence it has over its prime demographic: teenagers and young adults. In Streaks, we examine the popularity of Snapchat and its cultural impact on high school. This is the first article in this series.

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As a high school student, you can get away with not having TikTok. You can get away with not having YouTube. You can get away with not having Instagram. But you cannot get away with not having Snapchat. It’s a borderline requirement for high school – many use it as their primary means of communication with friends, study groups, sports and/or clubs.

This seemingly innocuous social media platform represented by a ghost silhouette has evolved from a mere messaging app with quirky filters into a one-stop-shop for seeing what your peers are up to.

There’s a multitude of reasons for this, some more complex than others. Peer pressure, FOMO, and plain necessity all play a part, but the core of this popularity boils down to this: The experience the app provides is simply more fun than other means of communication such as texting. That may be a familiar sentiment to frequent users of Snapchat, but to outsiders it’s less apparent. What exactly defines this perception among users?

Let’s pick apart the main features of the app. Snapchat has two sides: content, which is Spotlight and public stories, and communication, which is texting and private stories. Content will be discussed in a later article, but for now let’s focus on the communication side of the app.

The communication side consists of texting, sending photos, posting stories, and the map which shows the location of your friends. Besides posting stories, these are all fairly rudimentary features. However, Snapchat puts its own spin on them. It starts with how it brands these features. Instead of keeping with the “true” names of these features, which tend to be rigid and technical, it makes these terms much more casual; texting becomes “chatting,” sending photos becomes “Snapping,” posting becomes “sending,” and the map becomes the “Snap Map.”

The features themselves are also slightly altered. Famously, messages between users are automatically deleted after 24 hours unless manually saved by one or both individuals. Not only does this encourage more outlandish conversation by obstructing accountability, but it also creates a “disposable product” effect, where users don’t have to worry about the impact of using a product. Similar to how one doesn’t need to wash paper towels after they’re used up, one doesn’t need to worry about storage space when they send Snaps and chats to their friends.

These changes to the tried-and-true format of texting are already captivating enough to persuade users to change from plain texting to Snapchat – which it practically did during the app’s launch – but Snapchat cleverly adds an additional layer on top of it to make the app more rewarding and ultimately addicting: gamification.

According to an MIT Technology Review article by Bryan Gardiner, gamification is “the application of game design elements and principles to non-game activities.” Gardiner specifies systems such as points, levels, and leaderboards fall into this concept.

The most obvious example of gamification in Snapchat is the “streaks” feature. When two users consistently send snaps between each other, they start a daily “streak.” The streak can only be maintained by continuously sending each day snaps.

Our brain likes seeing large numbers. Despite this feature being fundamentally pointless, many will go out of their way to send snaps just to lengthen and maintain their streaks. Some may even pay the $3.99 for Snapchat+ to keep their streaks going when they miss a day.

When we evaluate Snapchat’s design and features, it’s apparent that these choices are intentional and designed to create a more engaging, fun, and ultimately addictive experience. An engaging experience is more appealing to the end user and simultaneously generates revenue for the company via subscriptions and advertising. In the next article in this column, we’ll take a look at the psychology behind certain choices through Snapchat Stories.