We decided to click through the Discover section for five days and take screenshots of content that parents might not know is there for their kids to find. From there, users are treated to an array of articles and engaging, looping, Vine-like video advertisements from places like ESPN, Cosmo, Buzzfeed, E!, MTV, Mashable, The Bleacher Report, CNN, and others (they change daily). One way that Snapchat allows marketers to engage its users is through the Discover section of the app, which can be found by clicking the three dots in the lower right corner of the opening screen. One might even go as far to say that Snapchat is in the addiction business, because they profit through extended use (example: the Snapstreak basically preys on neurology tied to anxiety that compels kids to keep their streak going by using Snapchat daily).
Since the app is free, Snapchat makes money through use – the more the kids “play,” the more the marketers pay. It’s important for kids and parents to understand that Snapchat exists for one reason – to make money.
We constantly test products to make sure we only recommend solutions that we trust with our own families. *Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. This is natural – the digital age just tends to push more and more on younger kids because they are drawn to whatever is trending. That last statement is important, because it points to a huge gap between how kids are using the app and what parents know about how kids use the app.Īnd, because Snapchat is popular, younger and younger kids will tend use it. Although Instagram continues to shamelessly copy Snapchat, 32% of all teens in US at the age 13 to 17 years old use Snapchat, and many claim they prefer the app because their parents don’t use it. With Stories, Snapchat Discover, live video, Spectacles, and other innovative features, Snapchat is still the top social media platform for teens and young adults. That wasn’t expected, but it’s pretty f-cking cool.Snapchat is the King of Social Media…for now It’s definitely brought a completely different flavour of communication to our relationship, more than it’s brought anything sexual to it. We talk about our relationship more frequently, more openly, and with more vulnerability than we have since we started dating. But for us, it became apparent that to avoid any inkling of doubt or jealousy or fear of the unknown, we were going to have to talk about almost literally everything. With some couples, the less the other person knows, the better. We maintain the sanctity of our shared space-so people don’t come over-and we don’t stay the night. But if you’re going to engage in intimacy with people outside your relationship, you need to make sure there’s a solid baseline of trust. When we started sleeping with other people, the goal was more about sexual exploration and bringing home something new in that regard. My partner wasn’t pleased about it, but it became pretty apparent I wanted an open relationship quite pointedly and urgently, so we determined that it was something we were both going to explore mutually.
But this definitely should have been something we shook hands on. It did feel different than the times I cheated in the past, though, because we’d had conversations about this being a possibility, and I leaned on the fact that at some point, the trigger was going to be pulled. I didn’t feel great going home-I cannot emphasize enough that this is not the best way to start an open relationship. There was a novelty about sleeping with someone new, and about it being someone I knew, and it was a good one in the context of sexual experiences. It was with someone I knew, and I certainly didn’t leave the house knowing that this was a thing that was going to happen, but I think it felt a lot safer. It’s not an approach that I think is advisable, but it’s what happened. But there wasn’t really an ‘Okay, let’s go.’ What happened is that I slept with someone else. We had been talking about it, what we wanted our arrangement to involve, for six or eight months. My partner was open to the possibility of us being open, but he wasn’t sure what that would mean. And I was also interested in maintaining a higher ethical standard than I had before. And so with my current relationship of seven years, it’s not that there was a risk of falling back into old habits-I didn’t meet someone new or see something coming-but I knew I had an appetite for extra-curricular activity. It was a difficult standard for me to adhere to, prior to my current relationship, and so I wasn’t really enacting any ethics. “I don’t have an extraordinarily strong record of maintaining monogamy.