While watching “Twin Peaks” last Thursday for my media studies class, I was suddenly bombarded by urgent text messages from my friends who were studying abroad. The first message read: “wait i’m like about to cry tho. did i do something wrong?”
My mind spiraled into a flurry of worry.
Then I read the next message: “Mike left me on-read and turned off his Snapmap.”
My concerned expression quickly dissipated and I shifted my gaze back to “Twin Peaks” to watch Donna Hayward dramatically react to her best friend Laura Palmer’s corpse.
I could not help but laugh at the distress evident in my friend’s text juxtaposed with its subject: Snapchat. I sighed exasperatedly and texted back: “it’s not that deep.”
I’m portraying myself as a sage, but only because I’m a nine-year Snapchat veteran who has had her fair share of Snapchat freakouts — and who has learned that keeping my mental stability intact means putting Snapchat into perspective. Snapchat interactions do not hold the same weight as real human interactions.
Snapchat is a multifunctional social media platform that allows communication through photos and messaging. Contrary to some of my friends’ opinions that Snapchat is irrelevant, a whopping 90 percent of Americans between the ages of 13-24 have Snapchat accounts. On college campuses, Snapchat is commonly used to keep streaks with friends, make fun group chats and facilitate hookups.
Snapchat is distinct from other communication apps because users are not afforded the comfort of ambiguity and discretion. Users can see exactly when a friend has opened, screenshotted or replayed a Snapchat as well as when a user begins to type in the chat box.
Although there are some loopholes for hard-core noncommittals to have their cake and eat it too (like the infamous half swipe strategy), Snapchat generally forces people to expose their reactions right when they see a photo or message. This is similar to the read receipts setting on iMessage, but even read receipts can be turned off.
The risk of rubbing someone the wrong way with a slow or non-existent response after opening a snap or a chat runs high and with it the pressure to formulate a speedy yet substantial response.
Snapchat’s exposure of users’ habits and whereabouts have intensified with the evolution of the app. Through “Snapscore,” Snapchat tracks the amount of Snapchats a user receives and sends. This can induce anxiety if a user notices that their friend’s score has increased (indicating that the friend has recently messaged someone) while the same user still has not received a response.
Moreover, users can decide to disclose their location on “Snap Map,” allowing others to pinpoint their whereabouts to a creepily-precise degree.
The ease and accessibility of these tools provokes many Snapchat users to toxically obsess over them. “Snap Map,” “Snapscore” and the status of a sent Snapchat contribute to the festering of Gen Z fears: “Are my friends hanging out without me?” “Is my significant other cheating on me?” “Is my hookup hooking up with someone else?” “Why are they not responding to me?” “Why did they respond so quickly?”
These inquiries underline my friend’s more destructive question: “Did I do something wrong?”
Perhaps the high percentage of young Snapchat users and the fact that 61 percent of Gen Z have a medically diagnosed anxiety condition have some correlation. These Snapchat features fuel anxious habits and signal the importance of separating the Snap-world from the real world.
Don’t get me wrong: I am not demonizing the entirety of Snapchat. Snapchat adds serious value to the human experience through features that allow people to document and share important life moments.
For example, Snapchat Memories act as an extension of the camera roll because it allows people to save meaningful Snapchats they send or post. Thanks to the Snapchat Flashback feature, I get to laugh, cringe, frown, smile and reminisce at my Snapchats from years past and be constantly reminded of all of my amazing life experiences.
Snapchat’s overarching goal is well-intentioned. Rather than villainizing the app as a whole, I am arguing that there should be no conflation between the snap-world and the real world. Repeatedly, I have witnessed friends garner frustration over an overdue or lack of response, only to discover there was a valid, unrelated reason all along.
My study abroad friends and I all have Snapstreaks with each other and we jokingly call each other out in our iMessage group chat regarding Snapchat actions. I was seriously humbled after my friend explained she lost all of her streaks (including ours) because she was tending to her mother who was in the hospital with a broken leg. Receiving that response after insensitively pointing out her absence reminded me that Snapchat will never be able to provide the full context of an action or location, even with its detailed tracking tools.
Snapchat cannot reproduce the genuine peaks and valleys of the human experience that transcend the importance of our phones. A person’s actions, posts and interactions on Snapchat are not an accurate portrayal of their reality.
For the sake of Snapchat users’ mental health, let’s relinquish the compulsion to mull over Snapchat actions and find peace in the fact that, in the grand scheme of life, Mike leaving my friend on read is insignificant.
Tess McHugh PO ’25 is from Denver, Colorado. She loves Jordan Peele horror movies, her Siberian kitten named Dolly and her mom’s basil pesto.
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