Snapchat The Future Of Digital Dating Or Just A Dirty App

Online Dating

Snapchat: The Future of Digital Dating or Just a Dirty App?

Gina Stewart

Written by: Gina Stewart

Gina Stewart

Gina is the owner of Expert Online Dating. As an online dating consultant, she helps men and women maximize their online dating experiences to get more dates. You can visit her website, www.ExpertOnlineDating.com, for more information or to contact her.

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Edited by: Lillian Castro

Lillian Castro

Lillian Guevara-Castro brings more than 30 years of journalism experience to ensure DatingAdvice articles have been edited for overall clarity, accuracy, and reader engagement. She has worked at The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, The Gwinnett Daily News, and The Gainesville Sun covering lifestyle topics.

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What is Snapchat? It’s the self-destructing way to send images and videos you don’t want saved.

This phone app allows users to take pics or videos that are all set to disappear after a given amount of time. Poof!

If users try to save them via a screenshot or something similar, they are thwarted and the sender is alerted that they even tried. Talk about embarrassing.

You can also write messages, or make little Perez Hilton-esque drawings, on top of your pictures and videos.

What would you be inclined to send via Snapchat?

If your mind went to the naughty variety, you’d be spot on. Why else would you need the media to disappear and never to be accessed again? Unless you’re Inspector Gadget receiving vital crime clues, it’s hard to imagine.

So what role does Snapchat play in modern dating? It offers access for you to make regrettable decisions that can’t come back to haunt your future political career. Check.

Maybe Snapchat could have saved Dr. Laura Schlessinger and Anthony Weiner some trouble in the past.

Surprisingly, it does more than that. 

While at a concert recently, I saw a handful of Snapchat apps open and recording the performance to send to their friends.

It’s a fun and convenient way to include someone in on the somewhat newsworthy events of your life, and keeping them available for just a few seconds doesn’t allow for the assumption that you think of them as a big production.

The app is disturbingly quick and easy to use, which may be why it is taking the place of recording a video and adding it to texts and/or emails/uploading to Facebook/Twitter.

“The app may be clever but someone

more clever can always thwart you.”

Snapchat isn’t without some cautionary tales:

When I first learned of the app, a friend told of another friend’s ex sending her Snapchats. Since installing it, I’ve received my own digital surprises from folks who happen to have my phone number.

Those folks have sent some stuff that could potentially ruin their lives and careers. Luckily for them, I am not technical or vindictive enough to exercise anything with that information.

The rest of you should be more careful.

According to an ABC news article, a new app called SnapHack Pro lets users save Snaps to their iPhone photo gallery without letting the sender know.

And digital forensic companies assert the Android version of Snapchat maintains a record of Snapchat photos buried in the phone.

Moral of the story:

Use Snapchat for fun, innocent ways to communicate. The app may be clever but someone more clever (or the government!) can always thwart you. The world has enough Lindsay Lohan shots.

Would you ever trust an app with your little secrets?

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