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Is Snapchat only used for sexting? We asked 5,000 people to find out

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Re: Is Snapchat only used for sexting? We asked 5,000 people to find out

#21

Post by crazygringo »

TillE wrote: post #18

> Frequently cited uses were to “send funny pictures to my friends” or “make silly faces for my friends” or “send jokes to my friends.” I don't mean to be a grumpy old man, but this seems even more pointless than usual. If it's not being used for sexual photos, then it's surely a fad that's going to die in a few months. All that other crap can be done via normal messaging; there's precious little reason to use Snapch…

I dunno. I haven't used it, but honestly, “make silly faces for my friends” seems a lot more plausible to me.

There's a lot of stuff -- really dirty/nasty jokes, really ugly faces, and I'm sure you can use your imagination -- that you would bring up in personal conversation but not really want to have an SMS or email recording of. Hell, I worked in an office where a particularly nasty-minded (in the most entertaining way) coworker of mine would send/forward me e-mails of all sorts, then come over and make sure I would delete them afterward.

Sexting is just a very small portion of all the kinds of messages people don't really want saved.

Re: Is Snapchat only used for sexting? We asked 5,000 people to find out

#22

Post by mmakunas »

TillE wrote: post #18

> Frequently cited uses were to “send funny pictures to my friends” or “make silly faces for my friends” or “send jokes to my friends.” I don't mean to be a grumpy old man, but this seems even more pointless than usual. If it's not being used for sexual photos, then it's surely a fad that's going to die in a few months. All that other crap can be done via normal messaging; there's precious little reason to use Snapch…

You're missing the point. People are realizing that it's probably not a good idea to have every pic you ever take be out there for the world to see. But they still want to share them with certain people. They (rightfully) don't trust other people to delete them (or lose there phone, etc.) and they don't trust the privacy settings of facebook and the like. Given that, having a mechanism for sending a pic and (almost) guaranteeing it is deleted is a compelling use case. Snapchat could certainly fail, but I think the general use case will be enduring.

Re: Is Snapchat only used for sexting? We asked 5,000 people to find out

#23

Post by untog »

TillE wrote: post #18

> Frequently cited uses were to “send funny pictures to my friends” or “make silly faces for my friends” or “send jokes to my friends.” I don't mean to be a grumpy old man, but this seems even more pointless than usual. If it's not being used for sexual photos, then it's surely a fad that's going to die in a few months. All that other crap can be done via normal messaging; there's precious little reason to use Snapch…

I don't mean to be a grumpy old man, but this seems even more pointless than usual.

To disagree with mmakunas, I don't think people care about the privacy angle so much- I think it's about creating something entirely disposable, and the freedom that gives you. It's like an anti-Instagram- no filters and perfectly positioned shots, just point, shoot, send.

I'm not sure what the exactly psychology of it is or whether it even matters that the photos disappear but a lot of teens use Snapchat. Just take a look at the demographics of a Twitter search:

https://twitter.com/search?q=snapchat%20me&src=typd

Even if Snapchat doesn't do anything that normal messaging can't, they've clearly packaged it in such a way that it's tremendously popular. After all, if it was possible with normal messaging, why wasn't anyone doing it until Snapchat came about?

Re: Is Snapchat only used for sexting? We asked 5,000 people to find out

#24

Post by Alex3917 »

awenger wrote: post #19
Alex3917 wrote: post #11

The methodology of the survey is somewhat weak. Snapchat has only been popular for about a year, whereas sexting has been common for 5+ years now. Not only does this mean that users have had a much longer time to sext via SMS than snapchat, but because it's a self-reported survey it's even worse; users are much more likely to admit to something the longer ago it happened in the past, which skews the data even further…

Survata co-founder here. Good point. We had the same thought and did consider running a survey variant with the fixed 6 mo time frame. And we may just give it a try to see how the results are affected. Even with the current wording, I find the SMS comparison useful. It demonstrates that people are willing to admit to sexting in the anonymous Survata survey format. I like your hypothesis about greater willingness to a…

"I like your hypothesis about greater willingness to admit to "bad behavior" in the distant past than in the recent past. My intuition is that anonymity weakens that effect, but we'll have to measure to know for certain."

If you look at this report on the validity of self-reported drug use, it goes into the issue of how people are more likely to admit bad behavior that happened long ago. Anonymity probably does ameliorate the problem, but I'm guessing that it would still be significant.

http://archives.drugabuse.gov/pdf/monographs/monograph167/do...

Re: Is Snapchat only used for sexting? We asked 5,000 people to find out

#25

Post by antidaily »

nollidge wrote: post #17
marvin wrote: post #8

No way I'm trusting this informal survey unless they have a plausible, data-backed explanation for the supposed huge gender disparity in sexting. The only halfway plausible explanation is that the 3.4% of men who are gay or bi all sext with each other. In other words, a large number of the respondents lied and the data is invalid. That said, anecdotal evidence (the people I talk do every day) strongly indicates that…

Sexting isn't necessarily two-way.

If only

Re: Is Snapchat only used for sexting? We asked 5,000 people to find out

#28

Post by brown9-2 »

TillE wrote: post #18

> Frequently cited uses were to “send funny pictures to my friends” or “make silly faces for my friends” or “send jokes to my friends.” I don't mean to be a grumpy old man, but this seems even more pointless than usual. If it's not being used for sexual photos, then it's surely a fad that's going to die in a few months. All that other crap can be done via normal messaging; there's precious little reason to use Snapch…

You appear to be looking for a rational explanation for why users of Snapchat are using Snapchat for what they claim to be using it for, when such an explanation might not exist.

Maybe it doesn't make a lot of sense to use Snapchat just for sending goofy pictures, but that doesn't mean it can't become popular for just that.

Re: Is Snapchat only used for sexting? We asked 5,000 people to find out

#29

Post by ckelly »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #26

Survata is a YC company that uses those spammy "survey walls", forcing users to answer a survey to get content they want. This data is garbage.

Survata co-founder here.

Thanks for your comment. We're constantly testing the accuracy of our network, and building technology to screen out respondents who are lying to us. To date, the results are good. For example, when we ask respondents "Which time zone are you in?" or "Who is the president of the United State" we see around 97% accuracy. We see this as evidence of quality data.

Re: Is Snapchat only used for sexting? We asked 5,000 people to find out

#30

Post by taylorbuley »

ckelly wrote: post #9
cooperadymas wrote: post #7

It seems to reason that people who use SnapChat for sexting are doing so to hide the fact that they're sexting, so they might be less likely to admit to it (even on an anonymous survey). Someone who uses text messaging may feel less compelled to hide it at all. This would be especially true for kids (under 18) since you also ask the age on the survey. Not sure how big a role this might actually play in the results.

OP here. Thanks for the feedback. We only surveyed respondents 18+ for this survey. We agree kids under 18 would have been more likely to lie about this type of behavior.

I've read of a technique where for self-reported statistics you mix in a non-pertinent question with a known probability, using Bayes to extract the original prior probability.

For example, instead of asking kids "do you smoke pot?" you ask that of 80% of people and the other 20% get "do you own a dog?"; the surveyor has no idea which question was asked but knows the overall population of dog owners.

Does this technique have a name that you know of and did you consider it?

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