More than a few times it happened to me to go out with my friends and see them stuck to their phones like the faith of the world depended on their presence on social media. Some days ago, I was with a friend at a party and we had a nice conversation, or at least it was for me. Then, in the middle of our discussion, he grabbed his phone and took a photo of the juice bottle that was on the table. Noticing my confused face, he explained: “I will lose my strikes on Snap.”. I didn’t get it. So, today we’ll talk about Snapchat strikes.
What is Snapchat?
It is impossible to not have heard about Snapchat a.k.a. Snap. This app is available both for Android and IOS and it is unique because of the temporary character “the snaps” have. What does that mean? You take a photo and you send it to your friend list. Nothing new until here. It can be seen only one time, and then it disappears, making it unavailable for other people, including those you sent it to. Theoretically, they can take a screenshot, but you will be announced if they do so. Tadam! And this is why this app is so loved and popular.
Anyway, what is the thing about these Snapchat strikes?
Apparently, things are really simple. If you send a message like this to your friends every day, Snapchat will count it. The problem appears when you stop. If you miss one day of sending pictures, your progress will be deleted. If you lose them, you will have to start again. Maybe you don’t see this as a big thing, maybe you think of it as something minor.
Just believe me. I was surprised to see people surrounding me that were panicking because they were losing their Snapchat strikes. I was talking to a colleague about relationships when he told me that he knows the exact amount of time he had spent with his girlfriend. Amazed, I asked him how does he know. Can someone guess? Snapchat!
Are you still not convinced that this is serious? I will give you one more example. I had this friend and every time she opened the app, she never missed to mention that she hates it and she finds it useless. Like any curious person, I asked her why does she still use it. The reason? “I will lose my Snapchat strikes”.
It is very sad to see young people starting to associate friendship days with Snapchat strikes, a social media app full of pictures being taken just to be sent, on a summer night spent with your loved ones.
Snapchat starts with the “Live the moment” idea, but it ends up destroying young people with every Snap strike. Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Twitter, and I don’t know if there are any more, because, even if I am only 17, I lost track of social media apps, which have become our own cells.
We are sitting at a table, we order a pizza and, instead of talking to each other, we talk to people from all over the country, people we probably have never met. The first thing you ask when you enter a pub is the Wi-fi password and this started to spread all around the World. We fight with our boyfriend/girlfriend and, instead of being mature and trying to find solutions to our problems, we swipe Tinder through <n> fully altered profiles.
You want to know more about how social media influences teenagers? Check this article!
We scroll on Instagram through photos that have #goals and we see girls with perfect bodies and faces, done very well with Photoshop, a good light, make-up worth of hundreds of dollars and an iPhone X, and we see photos of couples with #couplegoals and we blame our partner for not bringing us a 1000 roses bouquet, not offering us a trip to Hawaii and not having a tattoo with our name.
You spend time on TikTok and you see that the World is full of beautiful women and you got a normal girl, with messy hair after she wakes up and not wearing any make-up, who, what a surprise, also has some stretch marks from the changes her body goes through.
STOP IT!
Life is not virtual, life was not and will never be online. Yes, being able to talk to somebody every day is beautiful, yes, social media connects people, but everything in excess gives us health issues.
Put your phone down and talk to your friends while waiting for your pizza. Let yourself lose a strike so you can look into the eyes than can see only you. Ignore Instagram when it tells you that perfection is possible. Turn off Facebook when your crush posts a picture just to annoy you. Make sparks appear between you and her in real life, not just on Snapchat. Create stories that last more than 24 h. Leave messages in her mind that will not disappear after she reads them.
