Diffusion of Innovations

    In this generation, teenagers will cling to anything they can get their hands on. Whether it is a new movie, video game, clothing brand, or social media platform, they are down to experience it. When Snapchat was released in 2011, Generation Z immediately accepted it and ran with it. I would say Snapchat started to do very well because of how different it was compared to the other platforms out at that time. Its disappearing content feature completely made the app stand out and really helped it be pushed to society. The early adopters in this case were teenagers who found a cool, new app that they could have fun with. The only other platforms people were really using at this time were Instagram and Tumblr. Both of these were solely picture apps where users could post to a feed and add short captions. To have a new and innovative social media app that was centered around something that had not been seen before was extremely rare, especially back then.  

As Snapchat started to grow rapidly, many people, mostly parents, started to become skeptical of the app. This group of parents fall into those who decided not to adopt this idea. They believed that having an app that made pictures and other video content disappear was suspicious and a great way for their children to get into trouble. Before the excited teens could hop onto the Snapchat train, many social media employees were interested in finding out more about this phenomenon. They were the first adopters of this app so they could figure out how this company could potentially benefit them. There are many negative aspects of snapchat: cyberbullying, mental health and eating disorder issues, and child pornography. With Snapchat, I am not sure if the positives outweigh all of the negative aspects. This is sad because of how young Snapchat's demographic is compared to some other social media apps like Facebook or Twitter.