MAGGIE MONSON | Copy Chief
I deleted the social media app Snapchat last week and I have never felt freer.
The little nagging voice in the back of my head asking, “Why hasn’t anyone sent me a snap in so long?” is slowly disappearing. I’m still trying to get rid of the urge to seek mass opinion of a hairdo.
Snapchat is not the root of all evil. It’s not this terrible thing we all have to escape from immediately. It might be a little embarrassing to get caught taking a selfie in public, but we have all been there.
It is not doing us any good, though.
Once I stopped to think about it, I realized Snapchat is kind of unhealthy.
We have to worry about whether someone is going to screenshot an embarrassing picture. We worry about why that one guy didn’t respond to our snap. We stress over who that one girl’s “best friends” are.
I would spend too much time looking through my friends’ “stories.” More often than not, I really didn’t care about what was in them.
There were videos from parties full of people I didn’t know, pictures of people I didn’t care about or the inevitable pre- or post-gym selfie.
Public Service Announcement: few people really care if you’re going to or leaving the gym.
Basically, Snapchat is an app where you can watch videos you don’t care about and send your friends videos they don’t care about.
It’s time to end Snapchat.
I’m not against all forms of wasting time. I check Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook regularly. It’s not a terrible thing to take a study break by scrolling through your timeline or playing an addicting app.
I’m not here to lecture you about being productive.
Let’s just be smarter about how we waste our free time.
Snapchat made me stress out in ways that went beyond the time I spent actually looking at or sending selfies or videos.
You might think it’s a little ridiculous that I let Snapchat into my head so much. I bet, though, there are other people who also spend a little too much time worrying about whether that last snap was a little too ugly for human eyes (you laugh, but you’ve thought it).
I don’t want to continue using an app that makes me worry so much about my appearance or lets my friends send me videos of everyone having fun without me.
Snapchat might seem innocent, but it’s really doing nothing for us. At least other social apps let us connect more meaningfully.
So do yourself a favor. Delete Snapchat. Free yourself from the constant fear of the screenshot.