According to a recent study, the communication experience on Snapchat is more positive than Facebook and other social media.
Researchers at the University of Michigan used “experience sampling” on 154 college students.
They measured how the college students felt after using a social media platform by texting them six times a day for two weeks, asking questions such as “How pleasant or unpleasant was your most recent interaction?” and “How close are you to that person?”
Aside from face-to-face interaction, the study found that the most “rewarding” communication occurred through Snapchat.
Joseph Bayer, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan and the study’s lead author, said: ”On the surface, many people view Snapchat as the ‘sexting app,”
“But instead, we found that Snapchat is typically being used to communicate spontaneously with close friends in a new and often more enjoyable way,” he said.
“At the same time, Snapchat interactions were perceived as having less social support than other social media. These findings open up important questions about the benefits and costs of different social media,” he added.
The findings of the study indicate that one of the main reasons that users have a better experience on Snapchat is because of fewer “self-presentational” concerns, such as users not worrying so much about how they look in a photo.
Snapchat is one of the most popular “ephemeral social media” platforms. Messages sent via Snapchat only appear for 10 seconds before disappearing.
The researchers found that people paid more attention to their Snapchat messages compared to other platforms.
“If ephemeral social media are garnering a more concentrated form of attention, then Snapchat may also stand out from other social media to advertisers,” Bayer said.