Concerning trends and evolving interactions: Have Snapchat’s features provided opportunities to socialize? Or to stalk?

By Matthew Marotto

It is perhaps the most defining social aspect of the 21st century, and it’s everywhere. It affects everyone. It features seemingly everything. And with a medium so advanced and complex, stemming from the apps themselves to their real world consequences, the implications of social media are immense.

By Rori Anderson and Elsa Block

Snapchat is a social media platform that allows people to chat as well as send pictures and videos (known as snaps) with their friends. In 2020, over 85 million people in the U.S. used the app. That is a large percentage of the U.S. that can readily communicate with each other through Snapchat. That percentage is likely even higher for teenagers as Snapchat is incredibly popular among younger age groups.

One notable feature of the app is Snapchat Map, or Snap Map, which allows users to share their location with others on one central map. This feature can be altered for users to select certain friends to see their location. While Snap Map can have its benefits, local therapist

Julie Greenberg notes that more often than not, it fosters feelings of insecurity.

“If someone is already in a low mood and then they see on Snap Map that their friends are hanging out, it could increase symptoms [of anxiety, depression and a fear of missing out (FOMO)],” Greenberg said.

Margot Johnson, a Redwood alumni, looked into how Snap Map at schools in Marin affected students differently for her Advanced Placement Research project. Johnson found that the larger student body of Redwood made students feel anxious about social situations and that Snap Map added to this anxiety because it meant students could see what more people were doing, leading to increased FOMO.

“[Experiencing feelings of FOMO] doesn’t even have to do with whether you really want to be doing what other people are doing—it’s more that you’re just not invited, or you’re not there. That’s what makes people anxious. Snap Map basically feeds that anxiety because it makes [the viewer] so aware of what everybody else is doing,” Johnson said.

Greenberg also noticed how social media in general can influence teens’ desire to fit in – meaning Snap Map likely exacerbates this desire even more.

“Needing to be liked and accepted is a very normal desire for anyone, especially in high school when [teenagers] are trying to learn their self-identity and how to be a part of a group, [as well as] learning where they fit in that group. Not being invited may somehow make [teens] feel like they are accepted less,” Greenberg said. “Fear of missing out can make teens feel more self-conscious and it can lower their self-esteem. If [teens] feel like they are not being invited, they can start to have negative thoughts about themselves. These negative thoughts can alter their behaviors and they might feel more self-conscious, [possibly leading them] to reach out less.”

A commonly used feature on Snap Map is choosing who can view your location. Users have the option to set their location to ghost mode (where their location is off for everyone), select certain friends to see where they are, or turn their location on for everyone they have added on the app. While monitoring who can view one’s location can increase a teens’ safety, Greenberg notes that limiting who has your location can sometimes intentionally cause harm.

“There [are] a lot of situations where [choosing who can and can’t see your location] can be misused. For example, if somebody just broke up with someone, and they want to make them feel hurt. They want to show that other person that they were with a bunch of people, and that they were happy and fine. If somebody is using it as a way to get back at somebody [else], this can be hurtful in a way for people that creates anxiety and depression,” Greenberg said.

Another way this can be intensified is through Snapchat Premium, a subscriptionbased upgrade to Snapchat that was released June 2022 and allows users to pay $3.99 a month to have access to exclusive features. Senior Chase Cordova has Snapchat Premium and has seen the difference in the ways it can be used.

“If you click on anyone who has [their] Snap Map on, you can see [exactly] where they’ve gone for the past 24 hours,” Cordova said.

The location-sharing upgrade and other aspects of Snapchat Premium could change teenagers’ social life in high school by giving them more information.

“With the new updates, it kind of keeps on getting crazier and crazier. [For example,] if you press on a group, you can get directions to where they are. It’ll give you driving location [and] walking location. I think that is a really scary feature. It also could add to the FOMO or [even] the stalking part of it,” Cordova said.

Johnson had similar thoughts about Snapchat Premium when she first heard about it.

“I think that sounds like hell. … [Snapchat Premium] is basically doing the stalking for you,” Johnson said.

Scary as it is, Snap Map has a prominent place in Redwood’s own community: 53 percent of students check their Snap Maps at least once each day, according to a March 2023 Bark survey. Students use it in various ways, from looking to see who is around them to checking who is with big groups of people. According to freshman Nina Erwig, many people allot chunks of time to scrutinize Snap Map everyday.

“I check Snap Maps whenever I’m bored; I probably check it around seven times a day. … I look to see if certain locations are full of people, or if there are big groups of people together [and] who’s in them,” Erwig said. “Usually when I’m going to certain places, I will turn my location off if I don’t want people to know I’m there. If I know that a bigger group is there, I’ll turn my location off so people know I’m not associated with them. If I’m with my friends, usually if one person turns [their location] off, everyone will turn it off. It’s really calculated.” bark@redwoodbark.org

Over 250 million people use Snapchat each month. The app has reached multiple millions of people and has been around for over 10 years. That impact alone is vast and immeasurable – add in Snap Map, and Snapchat becomes even more evasive, almost alarmingly so, in society, especially among teenagers. Johnson touched on how that was changing Generation Z’s relationships and mental health.

“[Snap Map] causes conflict between our generation because we’re able to really see everything everyone else is doing. And so it can make people feel jealous or left out or have their feelings hurt,” Johnson said.

Many teenagers are aware of all of these issues, and still choose to use Snapchat every single day. They use Snap Map to see where their friends, crushes and even enemies are at any time. Knowing all this information gives teenagers power, but can also cause harm that is still being unraveled today.

Nowhere is this impact more pronounced than in the lives of high school aged adolescents, who spend a daily average of eight hours and 39 minutes on screens, much of it on social media. Having increased by 17 percent from 2019 to 2021, the duration of screen time usage by teenagers is rapidly expanding — even as an increasing number of studies find that social media has major risks.

Adding to this research was a recently released report