Snapchat is a popular photo-sharing app which allows users to send short self destructing picture and video messages to each other from their smartphones. There are over 350 million “snaps” sent per day on both the iOS and Android operating systems.

Snapchat allows its users to send these messages and select a time between one and ten seconds for the recipient to view the message. Once the message is viewed it is deleted and can never be viewed again.

Because of both the impermanence of the photos and inability for users to save or download them after viewing, snapchat has become popular as an alternative to other social media. Nowadays many users are fearful of the ways in which our data, especially photos, remain permanently on the internet, non-removable due to the strict terms of service that sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Flickr force us into in order to use their services. Privacy is becoming less private by the minute, but Snapchat promises that the photos, once viewed by the recipient “are automatically deleted from Snapchat’s servers and cannot be retrieved by anyone, for any reason.”

This makes Snapchat a viable service for sending those “NSFW” photos to your special friends, but snapchats true appeal lies in the difference between it and other social networking sites. Dating back to the early days of myspace, users have felt that their online profiles need to be a manicured representation of real life. We spend hours editing photos and text until it is ‘just right,’ curating our digital image for future bosses, family, coworkers, classmates, friends and secret admirers.

Snapchat allows users to escape the regimented and stiff traditional social world that hides as much of our personality as it reveals. It is an easy way to share moments with friends and family and to make sure those moments stay in the moment. Most importantly, unlike using MMS, its simple interface makes it easy, quick and efficient to exchange those little moments in life, and to make sure they don’t fall into the wrong hands.

Snapchat is less about showing off your naughty side and more about making sharing personal moments carefree. The youngest generation of social media users (ages 13-18) is wary of the culture that those youngsters before them have created through an over-zealous public sharing of information and Snapchat allows online social interaction without the permanence of an online profile.