Teenagers are serious about their Snapchat game.
Since the launch of the Snapchat “streaks” feature in 2015, a competitive flavor has entered the app. The feature keeps track of how many consecutive days two people have been snapchatting, displaying the number of days on the right side of the friend's name. While many of us might not care about our streaks, some teens strive to get the highest numbers possible.
But these serious snapchatters have one huge problem during the summer: sleepaway camp (most of which do not allow everyday cell phone usage if any at all). Camp-bound snapchatters knew that their most valued streaks would be in jeopardy. So what do they do? Have someone else maintain their streaks for them. And that’s how I got the gig.
My 13-year-old sister was headed to camp for two weeks. In fear that she would not be able to get on Snapchat everyday, she enlisted both my other sister and me to take over her account (asking both of us to do it increased the chance that we won’t forget).
After two weeks and losing one of her major streaks (205 days) this is what I learned about the scary world of teenage snapchatters.
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They often have multiple unopened snapchats: With so many snapchats coming in and out, it's hard to keep up. It's easier just to let them pile up and go through them all at once.
One of my sister's friends was responsible for 8 other Snapchat accounts
"I thought it would be fun to go on everyone's accounts, but it's almost the end of the summer and I'm so happy because it was so annoying," said my sister's friend, Anna. "I did it because I wanted [my friends] to be happy when they came home [from camp] with bigger streaks with the people they care about."
The longer the streak, the more you love someone
This might not be true in all cases, but streaks become a measure of how much you like someone. When my sister's 16-year-old friend was interested in a boy from school, she told me that he must be interested too since they had well over a 100-day Snapchat streak.
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