Snapchat Streaks – A User Case Study
(2018)
Introduction
As humans in the digital age, we strive to communicate with those around us – to make connections and to be connected. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat makes this easy for people all over the globe. While all of these sites are well known and used, Snapchat is particularly popular among teens and young adults today. In March of 2016, Snapchat released a new feature in a product update: streaks. Streaks are a number paired with a fire emoji that show up to a person’s contact within the app, indicating how many days (measured in 24-hour time intervals) in a row you have both messaged each other within the app. While Snapchat was already an enormously popular app at this time, this new addition had and continues to have people using the app every single day, determined to keep and build up their streaks with their friends, family, and followers.
Intrigued, I set out to find out whether or not users view these streaks as an aid in forming intimate relationships, such as close friendships, with other users. I made two main assumptions going into this:
1) When I say “close relationship”, I mean friendship, romantic relationship, family, etc. I do not mean relationships that only happen in passing or in certain settings, like a work acquaintance.
2) I safely assume that talking to someone every day does not in and of itself make you friends with that person.
I wanted to learn from someone who uses snapchat daily and has several streaks, so I reached out and interviewed an avid snapchatter and friend of mine, who we will call Sam. Sam as around 400 friends/followers on Snapchat, and 31 currently held streaks. Through talking with her about her viewpoints and habits, I found that while Snapchat streaks may serve to initiate, encourage, and prolong contact between users, they did not seem to create or increase intimacy between them. The intimacy between users has little to do with the streak itself, and much more to do with the preexisting relationship between the users.
Snapchat as a Whole
Users love speed and ease of use, and Snapchat provides just that. Snapchat makes it easy for users to choose to share messages, pictures, and videos with close friends or with everyone within two taps of the screen. Throughout Snapchat’s lifetime, we have seen a shift from basic messaging between users with the added twist of ephemerality to a much more social media type platform, with more longevity and broadcasting for a general audience.
As Sam describes it, “Times have changed, and how people use it has changed too. I used to do more of a conversation, like texting. Now it’s just like ‘look at what I’m doing’, … an in the moment kind of thing. It used to be more like waiting for someone to snap me back, waiting for a response type of mentality”. By recognizing the shift in how people are using Snapchat, we can see the change of mentality from purposeful messaging to broadcasting to a wider audience, like a temporary social media post. Sam also talked about Snapchat as a platform for more casual conversations than serious ones, saying that “the conversations I’m having on Snapchat will be ‘lol *dog filter*’, or what I’m doing at work, but what we’re texting about is ‘hey are we hanging out later?’ or ‘hey what’s going on this weekend?’. The more serious conversations will be on text, and the more unimportant will be on Snapchat.” She also mentioned that she like that with Snapchat, you can get and give more information with saying less, where the same isn’t quite as easy over text – basically “a picture is worth a thousand words”. She gave the example of being at the beach, where if she wanted to tell someone that she was there, she could either text them that she was at the beach, or just send a picture of herself at the beach, and they would know. This opportunity to completely erase words from a message has powerful implications. Messages no longer have to be as personalized as a one on one conversation, and can be sent to several different people at the same time.
The shift in the nature of Snapchat indicates that the app as a whole is not being used to foster intimate relationships, but in a much more casual and surface-level manner – to have light conversations or back and forth banter with people that you already have meaningful relationships with.
Routine and Upkeep of Streaks
The idea of streaks stems from the idea of daily interaction, which means in order to maintain a streak or several streaks, one must practice some sort of upkeep or routine. Sam has a very specific way of going about this. First and foremost, she puts a black dot in front of everyone’s contact name that she has a streak with, so that they are all grouped together under the symbols section of the address book that Snapchat provides. This allows her to go down the list snap them all in a more efficient manner, where in the past she would have to search through all of her contacts in order to find and maintain all of her streaks.
Typically, Sam will send out one picture each morning to all of her contacts that she has streaks with, in order to ensure the streak stays. In her words, this is her “little safety net” in case she doesn’t message them later on in the day. Even if she wakes up and sees that other people have already snapped her, she doesn’t open those snaps until she has sent out her mass streak snap, so she doesn’t forget anyone. She is also aware that streaks are based off of 24-hour time periods that start when the contact starts, and so if she thinks she will wake up later than the day before, she will send out another snap before bed. She doesn’t feel like the fact that she sends that one same picture to all of her streaks takes the personal aspect out of the streak snap, because she knows that many of those snaps are just a starting point for later conversations with those people to occur. When I asked her if she ever felt like it was more of a job than an interaction, she said that was not the case with the people that she actually talk to through Snapchat throughout the day. For those that were truly only there for the streak and not a conversation, she admitted to being annoyed, but not seeing it as that much of a burden to respond to them.
Despite all of this effort put into keeping the streaks alive, Sam classifies her streaks as roughly split into thirds, with 8 of the streaks being solely streaks with no further conversation, 13 resulting in conversation some days but not every day, and around 10 resulting in daily conversations. This points to streaks not being enough in and of themselves to create intimacy without a preexisting level of intimacy already in place, making them little more than an indicator of minimal daily interaction between two users, not unlike two coworkers form different departments greeting each other as they arrive to the office.
Screenshot of Sam’s contact list showing some of her streaks
Meaning of and Reasoning Behind Streaks
Unsurprisingly, different Snapchat users view streaks differently. Some people just want to talk or see each other every day, others care more about having that little fire emoji and number on their screen. For some people, it’s a reminder of relationship, for some it is a symbol of status. For Sam, it’s a way to reach out to those that she doesn’t get to see in person every day. She sites moving across the state from her hometown to college as the reason behind her top three longest streaks, all with people from home that she doesn’t get to see very often during the year while she is away at school. She talks about Snapchat being a good tool for keeping in touch with friends from home and updating them on her life, and that the streak simply has become part of her routine to ensure that she talks to them every day. When I asked Sam what streaks meant to her in a more general context, she told me this:
It’s just me, thinking about you, even if it’s for that fraction of a second of the day that I hit send. I look at your name, I see you, and know that that picture of me is going to you, and when you send one back to me, I know that even if it was just for that little second, you were thinking of me too. Even if we don’t talk anymore for that whole day, it’s like I said hi to you, or I just said a little good morning. I shared a little piece of me with you for the day, and it’s important for me to keep the streak because then I think of you. Even if it’s just a tiny little form of communication per day and even if we’re not going to have an extensive conversation, we connected.
Sam uses streaks as a little note of “hey, I’m thinking of you”, and she finds it important to at least send that out every day, regardless of whether or not other conversation ensues. After reflecting, she did find that regardless of the streaks that she has with people though, the only people that conversation consistently occurs with are those that she generally talks to in the first place, those that she is already close with in real life – people like her sister, boyfriend, and close friends. This example of how keeping up streaks doesn’t necessarily lead to intimacy is reinforced by another one of Sam’s longer streaks with a former high school track teammate. She and the teammate currently (as of this interview) have a streak of 532 days, but she tells me that they rarely talk past those initial snaps that keep the streak alive and going.
Examples of “streak snaps”
People can also interpret the lack of a streak differently, and Sam referenced this as one of the major reasons that she doesn’t break contact with people who she isn’t really communicating with in the first place. Some people just send snaps to others to maintain a streak and nothing more, sending what are called “streak snaps” – generally just pictures of a blank screen or something random like their shoes, indicating that this snap is solely to keep the number going up. Sam admitted to being annoyed by these snaps, saying, “it probably doesn’t annoy other people who just want to keep the streak, but I don’t like those because if that’s my nugget that I see of you for the day, I don’t want it to just be a black screen”. Despite this, she was very hesitant to break a streak with anyone. As she put it, “I think that it sends a message if you don’t want to snap somebody. I don’t want you to have a bad opinion about me because I cut you off, because it’s not a whole lot of effort to snap you back”.
Through explaining the streaks that she keeps, we can see a divide between the types of streaks that exist. All streaks encourage ongoing communication, but there are those that only last for one snap a day to continue the streak, and those who simply start the day with the streak snap and continue on into a more personal conversation a majority of the time. The difference lies in the preexisting relationship between the users, not the number on the screen.
Conclusion
Through the insights and practices of Sam captured in this interview, we were able to see that while Snapchat streaks can encourage communication, they do not lead to intimacy that doesn’t already exist. Streaks are either merely a symbol of status, a starting point for a potential conversation, or the simple reminder of an existing friendship that continues throughout the day, regardless of the streak. The level of intimacy in a relationship on Snapchat is measured by the connection between the two users, not the number of days in a row they use the app.
Special shoutout to “Sam” (you know who you are) for letting me interview her for this! You rock.