Snapchat recently celebrated its 13th birthday, the same age you must be to use this platform.
Within Snapchat, many things appear to children for them to do, hence the popularity of Snapchat.
There are features such as the camera, which has filters that are frequently used, stories, which can be seen by whoever the user selects, where you can show anything you like to whoever you want, you can watch short clip videos by different creators, message your friends and family, and lastly a feature called snap map.
The snap map may also appeal to families as it can be used to find the location of anyone who has the location setting on. This can be a great feature for parents who are worried about where their kids are. The area only shows to people you select, so although you can be found easily if your parents are concerned about you, you cannot be seen by someone you do not know.
Snapchat is also available in 37 different languages and is used worldwide. As of August 2024, it had the most users from India, with 173.3M.
Snapchat has grown 9% over the past few years, meaning 443 million people use it daily.
One of the controversies with Snapchat is the ‘my ai’.
A quote from BBC Bitesize is, ‘One day we’ll talk about how unsafe this Snapchat AI bot thing is.’ The problem with AI and most of the controversies are related to location. There have been incidents where a user has their location off, and the AI, an utterly robotic device, has given away information about nearby areas.
Besides the AI, there has been little trouble recently, as many previous problems were solved quite a while ago.
Therefore, Snapchat is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world and is becoming increasingly popular.
By Amelia B
Boston High School newsroom