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 its influence 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 second article in this series.

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Listen. We’re all glad you saw your favorite artist in person, alright? But come on, did you really need to post the entire 3-minute clip of people screaming while the artist sings a mildly popular song to your Snapchat story? And then four months later post it to your story again with the caption “missing this”?

Please, make it stop.

As someone who is very self-obsessed, I love the concept of a social media story. Self-destructing posts that allow me to forcibly let other people know what I’m doing or thinking at this very moment? Yes, please! 

According to a 2016 Verge article by Casey Newton, this feature has its roots in the early days of Snapchat. While it was initially a new and novel concept, it was quickly poached by Snapchat’s competitors, most notably Instagram in 2016.

It’s no surprise why other platforms wanted a piece of the story pie. The introduction of stories “supercharged” Snapchat’s growth in 2013 according to Newton that same Verge article, undoubtedly increasing revenue for the platform.

In the last article in this series, we examined the overall design choices which created a more engaging user experience. Stories are a great example of the reasoning behind these choices, as they exploit our psychological flaws to incentivize users to use the app.

Stories in particular exploit the fact that we humans like talking about ourselves. A lot. A 2013 Scientific American article by Adrian Ward estimates that people spend 60% of their conversations talking about themselves. And, surprise surprise, that number jumps to about 80% when it comes to social media posting.

But why?

It all has to do with the notorious hormone dopamine. When something good happens, our brain releases dopamine as both a reward and an incentive to repeat the action. It’s why it feels good to ace a test, hang out with friends or eat the best candy known to man, Nerds Gummy Clusters.

In that same Scientific American article, Ward says that talking about yourself activates the part of your brain that releases dopamine. So every time you post a story of you, for example, eating Nerds Gummy Clusters, your brain tells you, “Hey, that felt really good! You should do that again!”

As I loosely mentioned earlier, many social media features are designed with our psychology in mind. Everything from the color of a like button to the aspect ratio of a video was deliberately chosen to maximize user engagement. While this can and does captivate people’s attention and rob them of their time, taking a step back and analyzing these design choices and features can arm you with knowledge to improve your life and be more intentional about your habits.

For example: If you want to improve your relationship with someone, then utilize the fact that people like talking about themselves and ask genuine questions about that person’s life, hobbies, and tastes during conversation. Not only will you learn more about them, but they will see that you care about them, allowing for deeper connections and conversations.

In this article, we explored the individual psychology platforms such as Snapchat utilize to increase user retention. In the next article in this series, we will examine the collective psychology of the classic internet phenomenon of “copypastas” and how it can trivialize serious issues and topics.

But for the love of God, please stop posting videos of concerts. I really don’t feel like giving my right thumb a workout when my brain is turned off.