Snapchat is sort of gross.

Before I get hounded on by my friends, I know that I am not one to talk. I am one of the 60 million installers, 30 million monthly users, and 16.5 million daily users of the picture messaging app. In fact, some of my friends might even call me “obsessed,” and I won’t deny that. When I got a new phone over the summer, Snapchat was one of the first apps I downloaded. So, even though my friends and I are some of the worst about sending thousands of pictures to each other every day, why do I think it’s so bad?

Well, in a lot of ways, Snapchat is social media embodied. It has the instant access of Facebook, the brevity of Twitter, and the pictures like Instagram. However, even though that might seem like it’s a good thing, it’s not. The brevity of messages on Snapchat lowers the standards of communication. In an age where many people hate texting, Snapchat is almost worse because it shortens the message. You can’t have an actual conversation on Snapchat; you can only send selfies and #artsy nature pictures. The caption limit allows fewer than 140 characters (Twitter’s limit), which means you can’t say much, even if you wanted to have a good conversation with the app. Also, Snapchats don’t have the connotation that a response is necessary. Communication becomes broad and impersonal- how do you know that you are the only person receiving the cute picture that your best friend sent?

However, the most important part of Snapchat’s bad vibes is that its marketing revolves around the fact that pictures magically disappear after a certain amount of seconds- assuming you don’t take a screenshot. This is, of course, a lie, because images have to pass through servers to get from one phone to another. These images are stored on the servers, and in Snapchat’s terms of service, they say outright that they store your pictures. You may not have them, but they still exist. Anything you send through Snapchat has the ability to show up later in life, associated with your name and phone number. The idea that something you’ve shared can disappear is downright dangerous. After all, think about all of the politicians who have been torn down because of a single picture or video.

Snapchat, as innocent as it may seem, has the potential to be super dangerous to teens. As kids looking to head to college, we have to be very careful about how to handle social media. So, no matter what you think about Snapchat, remember to be careful. As last year’s assembly speaker reminded us, all online content is public and permanent.