Teens explain the world of Snapchat’s addictive streaks, where friendships live or die | Business Insider

Snapchat presents a real conumdrum for parents. It is nearly impossible to monitor, and can become the heart of teen communication. In addition to disappearing messages, the Snap streak is a lesser-known feature which keeps teens hooked. It’s the one metric that many teens live and die by. “A Snapchat streak is when you send direct snaps (messages or photos) back and forth with a friend for several consecutive days.

The longer you go without breaking the chain of communication, the longer your streak is. Snapchat rewards longer streaks with special emojis, such as the “100” emoji for streaks lasting 100 days, or a mountain emoji for an extremely long streak. Many teens invest an inordinate amount of time keeping streaks alive. There’s nothing more devastating than losing a streak you’ve put months of work into.”

We’ve included this article because parents may want to get out in front of this one. If more parents are aware of the issues, we might be able to delay adoption and redirect kids to iMessage which is easier to supervise.