A picture is worth a thousand texts
How Snapchat improved my real-world friendships
Let’s go back to the year 2013. I was a freshman at the University of Washington, and I roomed in a cluster with nine total strangers. Aside from what UW’s roommate pairing algorithm may have gleaned from its few questions, pure luck brought us together. While I heard stories in my freshman seminar of…troublesome roommates, to say the least, I was busy bonding with mine. My roommate ended up being a guy I got along with great, and three other kids in the cluster soon joined us. Three weeks after the quarter had begun, our newly established friend circle of five already discussed moving together, planned summer trips, and ultimately formed the backbone of one another’s social life outside of the classroom.
We all started using Snapchat with each other sometime later in freshman year. This was before groups were a feature, so we’d just select everyone manually for a shared back-and-forth. Mainly, it was used for inside jokes or remarks on the happenings in our daily lives that others weren’t there to see. We had developed a unique sense of humor, and the development of that humor — our own personal set of “memes” — was heightened through group texting and, of course, Snapchat.
Snapchat became a cornerstone of our perpetual connectedness when summer break began. We all left the city, either traveling or living at home throughout the summer. Our friend group wasn’t all from the immediate Seattle area, with some leaving the state entirely. That summer, while a few of us stayed at home and others scattered across Europe, we could share in a visual sense what we were experiencing. We could keep that same sense of humor alive when months passed without in-person contact.
The summer ended, and though we had really missed one another, we hadn’t been fully absent, either. Throughout the remaining three years of college, as friendships evolved, our living situations shifted, and we no longer saw each other every day, we kept Snapping. I don’t think many days have passed where at least one of us did not send a Snap to the group.
Snapchat has had three main advantages over traditional texting:
1. Quick, disposable images
This one is obvious to anyone reading who has used Snapchat before; it’s the primary selling point. Unlike sharing photos in a text chat, Snapchat doesn’t need to save them permanently, and the process is streamlined. You take the photo, modify it, send it, caption it, and delete it all in seconds. The limited nature of the photo adds a sensitivity that entices the receiving end to properly look at each Snap they receive. And, if necessary, the option’s there to save the image. This style lends itself perfectly to one-off jokes or remarks.
2. Forcing the sender to use photography
Once Snapchat becomes an ingrained part of someone’s messaging cycle, they utilize the camera much more frequently than they might otherwise. So even messages that could have previously been sent as text-only now have an image component to them. When I’m swapping messages with someone on Snapchat and they have their face, or the street in front of them, on the screen with their response, it adds context. I connect more strongly, and tone can be conveyed where otherwise, through text, it’s often lost.
3. Mini-Photoshop capabilities
Not only does Snapchat allow us to easily pair images with text, but we can also doodle over the images to further add to the remark we’re making. We can even add stickers, now, turning Snapchat into a mini-Photoshop of sorts. It’s crude, sure, but that’s the charm. We aren’t putting a load of time into what we send out, so we can send more frequently and with less thought. Yeah, that might sound bad, but the casual nature of Snapchatting is what keeps it in regular use.
Lately, Snapchat’s features have pushed for social media functionality, rather than the personal messaging aspects. It makes sense; that’s where the money is. I may be a curmudgeon for ignoring most social media aspects. I certainly don’t friend anyone I don’t know in person. Sometimes, I check people’s stories; that feature reminds me of how Facebook used to feel before it became a buzzing hive of shared videos, memes, and advertisements. Snapchat stories show me what friends have been up to lately, that’s it. Beautiful.
Those features aren’t the reason I was drawn to Snapchat, though. It’s that personal layer of often-goofy photography, with text or without. We share a chuckle at some point in our day, and it lightens my mood. In moments alone, I still feel close to my friends. That’s what makes the platform special.
