Can we talk? I know I can. But today, a conversation with a young person is difficult, even arduous. When I was a teenager, we had many family discussions and arguments about religious issues, cultural issues, political issues. We spoke on phones attached to the kitchen wall where our parents could hear everything that we said. When boys called, our dad would only let us talk for ten minutes. We were never allowed to call boys.
When I began raising my children, cell phones became quite popular, but few young people had them. With the advent of family plans, many parents enabled their children to have personal phones, but with that purchase came a margin of silence. Young people talked to friends on the phone without their parents’ knowledge, without their parents’ approval, only to be found out when the phone bill showed up.
In order to aid the teens, the phone companies developed a texting mechanism, and now, no voice need to break the airways. A teen’s privacy developed paramount importance., but still parents could access the teen’s phone and read the text from friends. And then, the advent of Snapchat.
Snapchat came on the scene in September 2011. “The company has tapped into a deep desire among younger Internet users for ephemeral communication…” Think about that. Ephemeral communication. What are the long term ramifications of that?
What is Snapchat, you ask? Snapchat is a means of communication that is primarily image based. The benefit of Snapchat is that you can take a picture of yourself, your friends, your dog, or your coffee cup; you can send it to your friends and after they view the picture, the picture disappears forever, supposedly. Even Hilary Clinton claims to like Snapchat as she recently related, “”You may have seen that I recently launched a Snapchat account,” she said. “I love it. I love it. Those messages disappear all by themselves.” Okay. Think about what she is saying. (I’m sure that comment is not amusing to the FBI.)
I decided to join the fray. I have SnapChat and via this means of ephemeral communication, I send pictures everyday to my son in Florida. I send pictures of my dogs, my coffee cup, my grandkids, the snow in my yard, my shoes, and any other senseless thing that I can think of just to get his attention. I add faces and special effects. It’s one way to say, “I am thinking about you today” and his response via image is ” Look at me, resting in a hammock while I am enjoying the warm sun and you are freezing your butt off.” No need to exchange many words. An added benefit of using Snapchat is that kids think I’m hip.
Why speak when a picture is worth a thousand words?
http://www.theatlantic.com/techanology/archive/2013/11/what-is-snapchat/281551/