Are Snapchat Private Stories Negatively Affecting Interpersonal Relationships Among Today's Youth?
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No one on Earth uses private stories more than me. As a matter of fact, oversharing on Snapchat (one of my favorite apps on my phone) is one of my favorite hobbies, but I've never really known why. Maybe it's the fact that I can update my friends from across the country every second of every day, or maybe it's because I can put a boy in my private story and post something I pretty much only wanted to send to him. We're all guilty of it, and we all use social media to our advantage. But a question to ask when it comes to Snapchat and other social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Hinge, is: what if it's taking away from our relationships?
A lot of people are experiencing the same thing that I'm going through right now. It's challenging to find a good connection with someone, it's hard to trust people, and it's even harder to believe that someone has the best intentions when it comes to you. Everyone is saying, “It's just the age.” It's the age of technology, the age of “girl bossing,” or the age of independent women detesting men. But, when you think about it, it’s just as hard to build an intimate relationship with a girl nowadays! A lot of this has to do with meeting online, social media, and trying to get to “know someone” based on what they post. At times, it feels like there’s no hope—scrolling through Hinge and seeing dozens of people you’ve seen in person, but are too afraid to approach you in real life.
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This begs the question, are apps making us weird? Am I the weirdo for being too scared to own up to my feelings and feeling more comfortable making a private story? This weirdness, this social anxiety, has been brewing in us over time. Seriously, now that I think about it, I'm the weirdo for posting the indirect picture on my Snapchat story rather than just sending it to him. I'm the weirdo for being on Hinge, but never going up to these men in person. Just as we're sitting here making fun of all these boys for not having the guts to come up and talk to us, we're exhibiting the same fearful behavior.
I started noticing this weirdness I felt towards others after the COVID-19 pandemic, and I realized how much I had overshared every one of my deepest thoughts on my private story. While I hadn't seen my friends in months, they knew every detail of my life and, honestly, in much more detail than they ever should have known. I also started feeling this way when I was in a relationship, and I found myself wanting to take my boyfriend off of my private story. I would go to his house and get so excited to tell him something that he had already seen on my Snapchat story. With our potential conversation topics being aired out before we could even talk about it for the first time, we grew distant. This takes the fun out of life, and it honestly made me sad for a long time in my relationship. I had no idea what was making me feel unheard and unseen.
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I’ve also noticed that Snapchat sometimes takes away from the special connectedness of a relationship or friendship. One of the most enjoyable parts of being friends with someone is being able to see their reaction to your news. Snapchat has a way of leveling the playing field, in which people have the option to say something or not say anything at all and you have no idea how they reacted. Wouldn't you say that takes the fun out of having close friends? Another thing that got me thinking is the sudden trend of everyone being obsessed with debriefing after a night out. It helped me connect the dots as to why forming and keeping interpersonal relationships have been such a struggle since the pandemic started in 2020. I'm not blaming the pandemic, but it’s one of the main events that made me realize how much I was posting on Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram.
But as a Snapchat+ member, I have no right to tell you to stop using it. However, because I have all of these insane features, I feel qualified to theorize how they affect my relationships. Take time to think about social media, what you’re posting, and if you’d much rather see the look on your friends’ faces when sharing news with them, rather than posting it to a story for everyone to tap through. I started posting less and talking more, and it helped with not only my relationships but also my social anxiety. I deleted Hinge and now I just walk up to people I want to talk to. There’s something courageous about feeling the fear and doing it anyway. You should try it! You may even surprise yourself.
Strike Out,
Writer: Payton Muscato
Editor: Isabel Wilder
Tallahassee