Snapchat is the dawn of the dawn of millennials ability to communicate effectively

I think we all know about the downfall of millennials when it comes to personal interaction and the building of relationships face-to-face. Many blame an increased usage and borderline dependency on social media and texting, and I tend to agree with them. However, a phone application has gone even further into ruining our interpersonal communication skills. Snapchat.

It would make sense to think that Snapchat was the hope of humanity for the lives of young people. Once again, nonverbal communication was back on the map. While fleeting, facial expression had come back for 1-10 seconds nonetheless.

Many of you are probably sitting there thinking, "But Mr. Kraft, Snapchat brought faces back into our conversations. How could it be a bad thing?" I will tell you. As I mentioned before, Snapchats are fleeting lasting all of 10 seconds at the most. Yet, many have substituted Snapchat for many other forms of communication. Why? Because it is even easier then texting. You snap a face and write something that barely resembles a sentence and the whole process of transmitting a message to another person is over. At least with texting, we were not constrained to some ridiculous character limit that makes tweets look like a novel. Texting and Facebook, albeit impersonal in their own regard, allowed for individuals to actually communicate about real things. You can't communicate much meaningful information over Snapchat for two reasons. First, the receiver has such little time to process the information. Second, it disappears almost instantly. My greatest fear is that people are replacing the replacement for real communication with Snapchat.

The ugliest part about this is that it gets even more impersonal with Snapchat Story mode. Snapchat has devised a scheme to allow people to post photos, essentially documenting their lives so that other people can take a look into it without ever having to talk to them. You ever realize that?

I will give you an example for me personally. Hunter Davis, knew him in college, but never too well. We got lunch together once. It was a great time, big fan of the dude. However, keeping up with people is hard and you will learn you have to pick and choose. Reality is, he isn't someone that I feel like I need to work extra hard at to maintain a friendship. If I went back to Maryville and saw him, would totally say hi but I don't make it a point to try and skype or call him once a month like some of the other guys at Northwest. I digress, back to my point. I know more about that kid through his Snapchat story than I ever knew about him when I lived in the same city as him. I know he went to a lake last summer, his floor decorations were Mario Bros. (they looked awesome), he has quite the obsession with Snapchat filters, and he does this thing where he zooms in on peoples' face and when they turn to face the camera he shouts "Got em!" It's really hilarious actually.

I have a challenge for you all. Look through your Snapchat history or whatever you want to call the place full of little see-through squares and sideways arrow looking things. When was the last time you talked to, texted, skyped, facebook messaged, facetimed, etc. with this person and more importantly, when was the last time you talked to that person about something that's more meaningful than a picture you took of your food or at a baseball game or studying or at the gym. If it's been awhile, call that person up, set up a lunch date, text them asking them how their lives are going and tell them something cool about yours. Anything to make sure that they know your relationship does not exist solely via funny faces on Snapchat. Bottom line, you should never be using Snapchat as a means to quantifying or qualifying a friendship.

Okay, now I feel I should conditionalize this whole thing. Snapchat in-it-of itself is not evil. It is brilliant technology and can be a lot of fun. I have it myself and use it pretty sparingly, but I still use it sometimes and I have to admit that Snapchat stories are a nice thing to look through when you are using the toilet. Yep, it's true, if you post a lot of stories I have probably viewed one of yours while I was on the can.

I just plead that none of you use Snapchat as a means to facilitate a friendship or to keep in touch with someone that truly means something to you. For people important to you, make sure you know more about them from real communication than the information you acquire via their Snapchat Story.