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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

#41

Post by tomprince »

ckelly wrote: post #29
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.

Although, questions with non-personally identifiable data or more likely to get honest answers.

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

#42

Post by halter73 »

benmanns wrote: post #38
taylorbuley wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 techni…

I know of a method in which you give each respondent a coin and ask them to flip it in secret. If the coin lands heads, answer "Yes," if not, answer honestly. Then, if you ask a question like "Have you sexted?" or "Do you use drugs?", you may get survey results that look like 60% yes and 40% no. You subtract 50% from the yes count to account for the coin toss and get accurate overall results, but the participants hav…

Interesting. I imagine this method would be particularly helpful for non-anonymized surveys.

Obviously, this would only be helpful if you don't have a good idea of how many people would lie in the first place. It also depends on the assumption that people won't lie given this plausible deniability.

The biggest problem I see is that this could only increase the variance of your survey results. The way I see it you have three binomial distributions base on three random variables:

  1. The number of people who would answer yes to the survey question if they were honest.
  2. The number of people who lied. (This is clearly not independent to the first random variable)
  3. The number of people who flipped heads. (This clearly is independent)
The problem is that coin flipping has the highest possible variance of any binomial distribution for any given sample size. So even if the variance created by people lying is completely eliminated, it would be more than counteracted by the variance introduced by the coin flipping.

I still really like this method since the increased variance is a moot point if giving people plausible deniability is the best way to normalize for lying. And you can always increase your confidence in the resulting proportion by increasing your sample size.

It would be interesting to run anonymized and non-anonymized surveys with the coin flip and without to try to determine how much anonymization reduces lying on various survey questions.

One nitpick: You should subtract 50% from the yes count and then multiply by two. So in your example, you would expect that 20% of those surveyed truly sexted or use drugs.

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

#43

Post by lotso »

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…

Think of it as having a picture or video conversation in This is where Snapchat does extremely well. It makes the act of sending a picture or video as frictionless as possible. I've never sent a video through MMS, but I've probably sent over 200 Snapchat videos.

It's not like sending an MMS with video or pictures is hard, it just isn't as dead simple as using Snapchat.

Another thing people like to harp on is the fact that people can take screenshots, thus "defeating the purpose." Fair point, but I think people who say this haven't really used Snapchat and don't really get why it is so sticky.

Sure, one of my friends may screenshot a silly face pic I send, but that's happened maybe 10 times out of the 4k+ snaps I've sent. The fact is I know I am not leaving a huge digital trail compared to using SMS/MMS, FB, GroupMe, etc.

Even if the system isn't perfect, it is good enough for me to trust. And the whole interaction model encourages me to send more pics and videos than I would send to my friends before I used Snapchat. It's almost replaced text messaging for me. Why send a text to my friend that I'm hungover, when I can send an image or video with my tired looking face and overlay text and drawings. It's so much more expressive and interesting than a text.

Another reason I like Snapchat is that I don't keep in touch via SMS with a lot of my friends. I may text them only once a week or every couple of weeks, but with Snapchat, I may send them a pic of something funny a couple times a week. Snapchat has made sending pictures and videos as frictionless as possible, and has changed how I communicate with people (I'm serious here).

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

#45

Post by saalweachter »

analog wrote: post #40
saalweachter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn't prior research established that men on average overstate sexual experience and women on average understate? I think I've seen this come up in surveys of number of partners and frequency, so it doesn't surprise me at all that it would happen in sexting surveys. Even assuming all of the participants are being truthful, you'll have some problems with definitions not being shared by the participants. The classic e…

Hasn't prior research established that men on average overstate sexual experience and women on average understate How would you be able to tell?

In the case of systematic lying it'd be hard, but when the problem is definitions -- what counts as sex and sexting -- you just need to ask more and more detailed questions and then the reasons become obvious.

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

#46

Post by mijustin »

It's common wisdom that Snapchat appeals particularly to those under the age of 18. This study focused only on "respondents aged 18 to 29".

What people (read: the media) really want to know is "are teens sexting with Snapchat?" Naturally, it's harder to get survey results for that demographic.

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

#47

Post by ianstallings »

Wow, a lot of denial on this particular topic. Let's be real. Even facebook is used a lot for hookups. All mediums will have sex on them because we are sexual by nature. So of course this medium will be exploited fully and denied in public because it's a sensitive topic. Why dwell? Who cares? Are we such prudes?

And come on, just asking them? Go ask the guys in the head shop what kind of pipes they are selling. Tobacco pipes of course. But we didn't just fall off the turnip truck.

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

#48

Post by svachalek »

rburhum wrote: post #44

Can somebody explain to me what is stopping someone from hitting the power + home button simultaneously and creating a photo of whatever is in the screen effectively working around the "self destruct" nature of Snapchat?

I believe it detects the action and rats you out although it can't actually stop it. I don't use the app but there was a story recently on some people figuring out a way to evade detection.

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

#49

Post by xanados »

benmanns wrote: post #38
taylorbuley wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 techni…

I know of a method in which you give each respondent a coin and ask them to flip it in secret. If the coin lands heads, answer "Yes," if not, answer honestly. Then, if you ask a question like "Have you sexted?" or "Do you use drugs?", you may get survey results that look like 60% yes and 40% no. You subtract 50% from the yes count to account for the coin toss and get accurate overall results, but the participants hav…

You are referring to a "randomized response" survey[1]. There are also list experiments and endorsement experiments for eliciting responses to sensitive questions[2].

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomized_response

2: http://graemeblair.com/sensitive/

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

#50

Post by keefe »

imho there is something here with a neural correlate related to gambling, e.g. I send my mom/boss/teacher a funny face picture or I send my crush a love note with an expiration date and I can cash in on the thrill with a low chance of the risk of exposure
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