Snapchat’s Weird Way Of Creating Discipline

This is one of my most far-fetched ideas, but I promise it’ll make sense

Zach Cronin
Jul 28, 2017 · 4 min read

According to Statista, Snapchat had an estimated 300 million active users in April of 2017, making it the least-used of the four major social networks — Facebook (1.9B), Instagram (600M), Twitter (319M). I’m a fan of all four platforms, but Twitter and Snapchat are my two favorites for contrasting reasons.

Twitter is a place where I dump my thoughts. I enjoy its rawness and transparency. Snapchat is much more intimate. There are a lot of pictures I’ve sent out that I wouldn’t dare post anywhere else. (If my friends screenshot them and blackmail me, that’s a different story.)

Snapchat’s going to be six years old this September. Evan Spiegel has brought his company a long way. The early days were simple — you were able to send pictures to your friends that were visible for up to 10 seconds. That was it. And it was one of the coolest and simplest ideas ever.

“Wait, you mean to tell me I can send ugly selfies to the girl I like and they’ll disappear?!”

Yeah. I don’t recommend it but to each his own.


Eventually, you could start sending videos and adding to your Story, which is when you post a piece of media for all of your followers to see. They also added a feature where you could look at another person’s best friends, and the community almost rioted when they took it away. (The running joke was you were able to see who all of your friends were trying to bang. We don’t have data for how many relationships that ruined, but I’m sure it’s a decent amount.)

Snap’s biggest feature, by far, is their integration with augmented reality, or “Lens,” as they call it. The tech names are boring, and AR is still in its infancy, so it’s not wide-spread, but you’ll know what it is as soon as you see the dog filter or the dancing hotdog. It makes communication more entertaining and engaging, and there’s even a conspiracy theory out there that Snapchat makes you look uglier so that you use their filters more often.

They’ve built on that tremendously by adding scenery and even voice altering, but one of their most subtle features is gaining popularity without the notoriety. It’s their use of streaks. When you and a friend snap each other at least once a day for three days, a streak starts. On the “chat” screen, a number will display to the right of said friend, indicating the length of your streak.

The dictionary defines “discipline” as a noun and also a verb. Of the latter, the third meaning is to “train oneself to do something in a controlled or habitual way.” Believe it or not, that’s what Snapchat is doing. Humans, for some reason, love streaks.

Business Insider ran a story on Snap Streaks in 2016 where they talked to high school students, and this is what one of them, Joselyn, had to say:

“I wanna raise my streaks,” Joselyn, a high school junior, told INSIDER via text message. “It’s a big deal when a friend breaks a streak […] whenever a person breaks a streak I get mad because it actually takes time [to] get the numbers.”

That last sentence is the key. Once you get on a roll of doing something, you feel like shit when you go one day without it. Snapchat may not be the ideal example, but you can apply that to anything; for me, it’s writing. If I don’t write for a day I get very irritable. On Snapchat, the repercussions are more annoying. It sucks when you lose a two-month streak because, as Joselyn said, you’re putting effort into something on a daily basis. If I don’t write for a day, I can easily get back on the computer and start up with no problems. The only thing I’d have to worry about is working harder to make the progress I missed out on the day before.

As those younger kids age and become more mature, they can take the disciplinary foundation and apply it to whatever they choose. It’s weird to think. But there’s also the chance I’m overthinking something so simple. Oh well!


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