Snapchat Streaks: Where Friendships Are Put To The Test

Snapchat is a social media app where you can send pictures to your friends for limited amounts of time, and after the time has expired the picture will disappear, or so that's what we think. When you snapchat a friends for multiple days straight something known as a streak will appear next to their username. The longer you go without breaking the chain of communication, the longer your streak will last. If your streak reaches a certain number of days you are rewarded with a special emoji. For instance, if your streak lasts 100 days the 100 emoji will appear next to the friends name. Many teens spend an unreasonable amount of time "keeping the streak." Teens will go out of their way to keep a streak with people they do not even talk to irl. They will send the infamous "kts" picture and that will be the end of the conversation between someone and their streak. Having proof of a long-term streak with a friend gives a sense of validation to the user. Also, once you hit 100 days, 200 days, etc. with your friend you MUST post it on your story for everyone to see, because people need to know that your friends and you have been sending pictures for 100 consecutive days. However if your phone gets taken away or you're going on vacation where there's no internet connection you have to pick a reliable friend to keep your streaks for you while you are gone, because nothing is worse than losing a two month streak you've worked so hard to keep with a random person. 

Now I am not saying that I never kept streaks before, anybody with snapchat has done it once in their lifespan of using the app. However, I decided to quit keeping streaks because I realized I wasn't even having conversations, let alone friendships, with half of the people on my list. It finally clicked in my head one day that I am simply sending people one picture a day for absolutely no reason at all. Therefore, I stopped. I'm not against teens having streaks, but I think that it should happen naturally. If you genuinely talk to that person every day and a streak forms that is ok, but if you are keeping streaks with people you don't even consider your friend I think that that is a little excessive. Once I stopped keeping streaks I actually found myself not using the app as much anyways. It made me realize that I was only on snapchat 50% of the time just to keep streaks, which when you think about is crazy.