Snapchat
This course has really sparked my interest in new technologies. The one I want to talked about in this post is the app called Snapchat. Snapchat has been around for awhile not for sure exactly how long. It's a very popular app the main purpose of this app is to take a picture and share with friends or with a group. The big driver behind it, that makes it different from everything else is once you send the picture and somebody sees it then it disappears. I personally don't believe this. I think once you send a picture it's out there somewhere somebody has access to it if they really want it. But for all intents and purposes the person you sent it to can't see it again. That's at least my understanding. As for being a father I have two teenage daughters they're both very much into Snapchat so I have begin to pay more attention to it because of this class. I Have quickly come to find out that Snapchat can be a very dangerous app. I found out here recently that they updated the app to the point that there's a map that shows your location. This is a feature that can be turned on and off but for the most part my understanding is everybody has it on so they can see where their friends are at. The problem with this is I've learned most teenagers don't pay a lot of attention to who they are accepting as followers no matter what the social media app is. So with Snapchat it's the same thing they accept request for people to follow them and be able to see them on the map and when they send out a story everybody can see it. That's what worries me is it any time somebody that has bad intentions can get on their Snapchat look it up and see right where someone else is located. This part of Snapchat is actually so accurate that when you're traveling at a high rate of speed it'll track it and the little person on the map will be in a car. The seems to be somewhat of a safety concern of mine now that I'm learning about Snapchat. I've come to the quick agreement with my daughters whether they like it or not that they will not have that feature turned on their Snapchat. They can have as much fun as they want with the different filters but at no time does anyone on Snapchat need to know their location. I can see Snapchat becoming one of the Technologies that I research even more just because I don't seem to care for it too much. I have a website at the end of this post that helps me describe this SnapChat map that I'm talking about.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/21/snap-map/
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/21/snap-map/
Hey Jeff, I totally get ya, we have 2 teenagers as well! A couple of years ago when our oldest came home saying everyone had snap and it would, "Totally sink her social life if she didn't get it!", we started doing research. My husband loaded it on both of our phones and had most of our friends, who also have teenagers, put it on their's. Once we got familiar with it, we set down guild-lines for our kids. 1) Under NO circumstances can they hide us from their stories. 2) They are NEVER allowed to turn on their location, it is to remain in ghost mode at all times. 3) Like Facebook, Instagram, or any other app they have they can only accept requests from people they know. 4) Like anything else on their phones, we will be checking! If any of these guide-lines have violated,we have the right to take away or delete it immediately. We do check and frequently! Raising a kid in this day and age is exhausting! I miss the days where our friends had to actually call our house, at least then our parents knew who we were talking to!
ReplyDeleteI don't personally have snapchat myself but I think another draw to it are the filters. You can find videos and pictures all over the internet with the face swap filter. Around Christmas time people were posting videos with the reindeer filter that would change the faces and voices. I have seen other people use the filters and some of them seem pretty fun.
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