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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

#31

Post by jseliger »

Alex3917 wrote: post #24
awenger wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ameli…

Great link—thanks for posting it—too few people cite the sources for their beliefs. In a related context, "Truth and consequences: using the bogus pipeline to examine sex differences in self-reported sexuality" discusses how "some of the sex differences in self-reports of sexuality are not due to actual sex differences in behavior, but rather to differences in reporting as a function of differential normative expectations for men and women": http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Truth+and+consequences%3a+usin... .

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

#32

Post by mmakunas »

untog wrote: post #23
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 i…

Interesting point.

I think it's about creating something entirely disposable, and the freedom that

Part of that freedom comes from the level of privacy I think. But from looking at those tweets maybe I'm over estimating how people are explicitly thinking about privacy.

It just goes to show that is not always about creating something where the individual bits of functionality are new. Sometime the most compelling thing is putting a novel spin on what we already do and building a network of users around that.

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

#34

Post by jonnathanson »

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…

Call me crazy, but it seems to me that Snapchat solves an actual need: namely, that users want to be uninhibited in being social, but don't necessarily want a paper trail of all their crazy, goofy, drunk, sexy, etc., behavior following them around.

This doesn't necessarily mean that sexting is the only legitimate use case, or even the predominant use case. Rather, I see as the use case pretty much anything that people want to share via SMS, or even on Facebook -- but don't want to remain up for long, or be seen accidentally by undesired audiences (parents, co-workers, friends who are outside the specific loop, etc.).

Snapchat is sort of like social networking as pointcasting, rather than social networking as broadcasting.

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

#35

Post by MikeKusold »

I've received ~10 snapchats a day for the past month, and I have never received a sexting photo via snapchat. Instead my friends send pictures of: food, landscapes, people they are with, pets, etc...

Basically the point of Snapshot is to share mundane photos without the other person being able to share with their friends all the boring photos you send them throughout the day.

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

#36

Post by azundo »

In terms of the comparison with SMS, this survey also seems to miss that sexting via text (words) is very different than sexting via snapchat (pictures). I'm sure a much higher percentage of the population is more comfortable with the former than latter, which doesn't make the comparison all that surprising.

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

#37

Post by saalweachter »

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…

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 example is "Does oral sex count?" Men, for whom a large number of partners is (sometimes) culturally good, may be inclined to count it. Women, for whom a large number of partners is (sometimes) culturally bad, might not count it.

With respect to sexting, imagine a woman sends a man a picture of herself in a low-cut dress. The man might say, "she was totally sexting me", and believe it, the woman might say, "I was fully dressed in an outfit seen by hundreds of people at a party, how can that be sexting?", and believe it.

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

#38

Post by benmanns »

taylorbuley wrote: post #30
ckelly wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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 have plausible deniability.

However, I can't remember the name of it, nor the article I read about it, and Google isn't helping.

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

#39

Post by arrrg »

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…

Not just the operationalization of relevant variables, also the analysis of the data is lacking. There are some very standard and boring methods to get a much clearer idea of whether there actually is a difference and also to more clearly look at interaction effects (between, say, age, gender and behavior).

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

#40

Post by analog »

saalweachter wrote: post #37
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…

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?

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