My Little Sister Taught Me How to “Snapchat Like the Teens”

I don't think so. When I was a teenager I spent hours talking on the phone with friends (even though I had just seen them that day at school) then later on AOL then instant messenger (I'm old). At that age your world revolves around your friends and communicating with them is important. Later we all get jobs and spend most of our time doing other things and it doesn't seem as important to be constantly talking to our friends. We also don't have the common social environment of high school or college with all that entails to talk about.

I'm in Seattle, so maybe I'm biased -- but many of my friends and I from 20s to 30s all enjoy Snapchat. The moments are real, time-limited, don't require a reply, aren't faked by filters, and aren't a popularity contest. That makes it a huge improvement over every other social network we use.

It's by far the easiest way to share a picture or moment with friends -- a photo is worth 1000 words and the location/time/velocity overlays add a lot of context. In many ways it's actually one of the most mature popular social networks -- it clearly learned from earlier social network attempts. I don't have to be "cool" to anyone but the relevant people to whom I send a snap.

It feels private enough -- hot girls like to use it and that will get anyone on any platform/club/bar/social location. Sorry to all of you who are using other slower, more ad-ridden networks and missing out.

You're looking back with rose-coloured glasses. I did the same thing with ICQ, MSN Messenger, etc. for chat. I did the same thing with Ultima Online and Counterstrike for gaming. I mean shit, there was a few weekends where my best mate from school and I camped a spawn of particular monsters in UO such that we spent about 17 hours total there each day of the weekend for a few weekends. When one needed to go (dinner, lunch, toilet) the other controlled their pets and vice versa. Why? Cause we were teens with heaps of spare time and no commitments.

Teens go through this phase. They're time-rich, money-poor and have few commitments and obligations. In the 70s and 80s they spent the time at an arcade becoming savant-level good at pacman or asteroids or whatever. A natural part of leaving your teens is slowly inheriting a bunch of obligations that you must meet (bills, employment, etc.) which take away the free time you had to utterly saturate yourself in whatever hobbies you had, and thus you become more selective in what sinks you plough your time into (and the depth of those sinks).

This is no worse than what any other generation went through. There'll be outliers of whatever time sinks in any generation. Don't sweat it.

"This is a personal, non-sponsored post by a member of BuzzFeed's ad content team."

Um, so it's an ad for SnapChat that SnapChat didn't pay for...or not an ad by a guy on the "ad content team"? If it's the latter why mention it at all (or simply say "this is not an advertisement"). The convoluted language makes me think it is an ad. Anyway...

Yes, tweens are very prolific social media users...they're practically born with the skills in their blood. Ten-year olds are skilfully filming, producing and editing videos, and uploading them to YouTube, that leave people in their 30s and up speechless.

The generations that came of age before about 1998 to 2000ish, when the Internet and digital technology started becoming ubiquitous and taught in schools, are still somewhat baffled by even basic technology. Example...during a dinner in 2014 that included my sister and her boyfriend (who are both in their mid-30s) he notices the customized icon arrangement and screen flip effects on my phone (iPhone, jailbroken) and asks if he can do that on his phone. I ask him if he'd bought an iPhone (I remembered him having a Windows phone) and he says no, pulls out his Lumia and starts fiddling with it. After a moment he asks "so what do I have to do to get that effect?" and I say "that's a Windows phone, isn't it?"..."I think so, but I can jailbreak it, right?"..."jailbreaking is an iPhone thing, I don't think there's a Windows phone equivalent..."oh, it won't work if it's Windows?"..."um, no, you need an iPhone but if you have an Android device you can root it and install customs ROMs which is sort of like jailbreaking"...."cool so I can install Android on this phone (Lumia), right?"... facepalm

Later that evening my sister (who is much more tech savvy than her boyfriend and an advanced social media user) notices that my headphones are cordless. "I never noticed those headphones before, I hate tangled cords etc. "..."yeah Bluetooth is pretty handy"..."is it included with your plan?"..."is what included?"..."the Bluetooth service"..."it's built into the device and...wait, you thought there was an extra charge for using Bluetooth?" "no, um, I was just wondering" facepalm

They are both educated, fairly worldly, middle-class. She has a Masters (arts) and worked at a law firm and he was finishing his PhD (arts). Oh, and they were both surprised to learn they can listen to mp3s on their Windows and Android devices.

I've met other "older" people who are absolutely clueless about basic features and options on their computers and devices (e.g. getting rid of the annoying bloatware that comes pre-installed on off-the-shelf Windows machines, blocking browser ads, connecting and configuring peripherals) but their level of ignorance really surprised me.

I've since noticed a sharp contrast in tech literacy between people who graduated or left high school before the Internet exploded and those who were introduced to it in school. For so-called digital natives like the author's sister, and my 14 year-old cousin, the line between what used to be called real life and social media has dissolved and fully integrating social media into their day-to-day lives comes almost naturally. It's not a new thing...it just is and they use it at an intuitive level...and expect new platforms to emerge and features to continually evolve.

Interesting times for the human animal...

> Plus, you are (were) one of the dorks and your sister is one of the cool kids. The two groups have noticeably different modes of socialising.

Very true. And like some of the other commentors are pointing out, it's somewhat sad that the old, more "natural" communities built over time are becoming a dying breed.