Chapter 27 Exercises: Snapchat, Streaks, and Ephemerality

Reflection Exercises

Exercise 1 (Reflection) If you use or have used Snapchat, describe your relationship with streaks. Have you ever felt anxiety about losing a streak? Have you sent a snap primarily to maintain a streak rather than to communicate something? If you have not used Snapchat, reflect on a different digital behavior that you engage in out of habit or obligation rather than genuine desire.

Exercise 2 (Reflection) Think about the distinction the chapter draws between "state anxiety" and "trait anxiety." Can you identify examples of each type of anxiety in your own experience with digital technology? Which type do you find more disruptive to your daily life?

Exercise 3 (Reflection) The chapter describes Maya's snap ritual as having "the texture of obligation rather than desire." Identify a digital behavior in your own life that feels similarly obligatory. When did it start feeling like an obligation? Do you remember when it felt optional?

Exercise 4 (Reflection) Snapchat was founded on the premise that ephemeral communication would reduce social media anxiety. Did the founding premise seem reasonable to you before you read the chapter? After reading the chapter, how do you evaluate the founders' original intentions?

Exercise 5 (Reflection) Consider the "streak sitter" phenomenon. Have you ever asked someone else to manage a social media account, counter, or engagement metric on your behalf? What does this behavior suggest about our relationship to the metrics themselves versus the relationships they purport to represent?

Exercise 6 (Reflection) The chapter notes that Maya kept Ghost Mode enabled on her own Snap Map while obsessively checking her friends' maps. What does this asymmetry — wanting information about others while withholding information about yourself — tell you about social surveillance and privacy preferences?

Exercise 7 (Reflection) Describe a moment when seeing something on social media that confirmed you were being socially excluded made you feel worse than not knowing would have. How does Snap Map's real-time, cartographic visualization of social exclusion change the experience compared to indirect evidence of exclusion?

Research Exercises

Exercise 8 (Research) Find and summarize at least three peer-reviewed studies on Snapchat use and adolescent mental health published between 2015 and 2025. What are the main findings? What methodological limitations do the authors acknowledge? What conclusions are most strongly supported by the evidence?

Exercise 9 (Research) Research the history of Snapchat's founding, including the roles of Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown. Brown later filed a lawsuit claiming to have been a co-founder who was cut out. What does the legal dispute reveal about the founding narrative? How did the resolution of the lawsuit shape Snapchat's early corporate culture?

Exercise 10 (Research) Investigate the Instagram Stories launch in 2016. How did Snapchat respond? What did CEO Kevin Systrom say about copying the format? Find examples of other technology companies that have copied successful features from competitors. What does this pattern suggest about innovation and competition in the social media industry?

Exercise 11 (Research) Research Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory and the concept of loss aversion. Find at least one peer-reviewed study that applies loss aversion theory to digital product design or social media engagement. Summarize the study's main findings.

Exercise 12 (Research) Look up Danah Boyd's research on teenagers and social media, particularly her book "It's Complicated." What are Boyd's main arguments about how teenagers use social media? How do her findings compare to the narrative in this chapter?

Exercise 13 (Research) Find data on Snapchat's current monthly active user numbers and demographic breakdown. How has the platform's user base changed since its founding? What proportion of its users are teenagers versus adults? How does this demographic profile shape the ethical responsibilities of Snapchat's design team?

Exercise 14 (Research) Research the regulatory landscape for children's and teenagers' use of social media. What laws currently govern the design of products for users under 18 in the United States and in the European Union? How do these regulations address features like streaks or real-time location sharing?

Analysis Exercises

Exercise 15 (Analysis) Apply the six principles of influence identified by Robert Cialdini — reciprocity, commitment and consistency, social proof, authority, liking, and scarcity — to Snapchat's streak mechanic. Which principles does the streak activate? Which is most powerful, in your assessment, and why?

Exercise 16 (Analysis) The chapter describes Snapchat's evolution from a bilateral, ephemeral messaging app to a hybrid platform that includes broadcast Stories, algorithmically curated Discover content, and real-time location sharing. Analyze this evolution from a business strategy perspective and from an ethics perspective. Do the same changes look different through these two lenses?

Exercise 17 (Analysis) Compare Snapchat's streak mechanic to a fitness app's streak mechanic (for example, Duolingo's learning streaks or Headspace's meditation streaks). Both use the same basic psychological mechanism. Are the ethical implications the same? What variables — the audience, the behavior being incentivized, the consequences of breaking the streak — affect the ethical evaluation?

Exercise 18 (Analysis) The chapter discusses the tension between Snapchat's founding philosophy of ephemerality and the advertising business model that requires user data persistence. Map out the specific incompatibilities between these two orientations. Is there a business model that could support Snapchat without these incompatibilities? What would it look like?

Exercise 19 (Analysis) Apply Marcia's four-status model of identity development to Snapchat's design. Which design features support identity exploration (moratorium)? Which features create pressures toward consistency or commitment that might limit identity exploration? On balance, does Snapchat's design support or undermine healthy adolescent identity development?

Exercise 20 (Analysis) The chapter notes that teenagers who understood their streaks to be performative rather than genuinely communicative still valued them and felt distress at their loss. Analyze this observation using the concept of cognitive dissonance. Why does intellectual recognition of irrationality not provide behavioral immunity? What psychological research supports your analysis?

Exercise 21 (Analysis) Evaluate Snapchat's screenshot notification system as an ethical design choice. The notification informs the sender that their content has been captured, but only after the capture has occurred. Is notification without prevention an adequate response to the violation of the ephemerality promise? What alternative technical approaches might be more effective?

Creative Exercises

Exercise 22 (Creative) Write a one-page design brief for an alternative streak-like feature that would incentivize meaningful communication between friends without activating loss aversion or creating anxiety. What would it measure? What would the consequences of "missing a day" be? How would you present the feature visually?

Exercise 23 (Creative) Write a 500-word first-person narrative from the perspective of a teenager who has just lost a 300-day streak. What is the emotional texture of the experience? How does the teenager make sense of why the loss feels so significant? What do they do next?

Exercise 24 (Creative) Design a version of Snap Map that you believe would provide genuine social value while minimizing the social anxiety and exclusion visualization problems the chapter describes. What would the privacy defaults be? What information would be shared? At what granularity? How would you present the information to minimize harmful social comparison?

Exercise 25 (Creative) Write the memo that Dr. Aisha Johnson might have sent to Velocity Media's product team about introducing a Snap Map-equivalent feature. Draw on the specific research findings discussed in the chapter. Make the memo specific, evidence-based, and persuasive.

Exercise 26 (Creative) Create an annotated timeline of Snapchat's major product decisions from 2011 to 2023. For each major decision, note: the business rationale, the user psychology rationale, and the potential ethical concerns. What patterns do you see across the timeline?

Group Discussion Exercises

Exercise 27 (Group Discussion) Divide the group into two sides: one arguing that Snapchat streaks are a legitimate design choice that users voluntarily adopt, and the other arguing that streaks are a manipulative design pattern that exploits psychological vulnerabilities. After the debate, discuss where the strongest arguments on each side were most persuasive.

Exercise 28 (Group Discussion) Discuss the concept of the "perfect privacy setting." Snap Map offers Ghost Mode, which allows users to hide their location. Instagram allows users to make accounts private. Most platforms offer some version of privacy controls. Is the availability of privacy controls sufficient to address privacy and anxiety concerns? What would "privacy by design" look like on these platforms?

Exercise 29 (Group Discussion) Consider the "streak sitter" phenomenon as a sociological phenomenon. What does it reveal about social norms around digital continuity? Compare it to other social institutions people have developed to maintain digital presence during absences (e.g., scheduling social media posts, using auto-responders). What is common across these behaviors?

Exercise 30 (Group Discussion) The chapter notes that Snapchat's research suggested the platform was associated with more authentic communication than Instagram. But the introduction of Stories reintroduced performance pressure. Discuss the tension between broadcast and bilateral communication modes in social media. Is it possible for a platform to support both simultaneously without the broadcast mode colonizing the bilateral mode?

Exercise 31 (Group Discussion) Consider the ethical responsibilities of Snap's design team specifically with respect to their teenage user base. What additional obligations, if any, does a company have when a significant proportion of its users are minors? Should design standards for products used primarily by teenagers be higher than those for products used primarily by adults?

Exercise 32 (Group Discussion) Discuss the Velocity Media internal debate described in the chapter. Who do you think was right — Marcus Webb, who argued for the engagement benefits of streaks, or Dr. Aisha Johnson, who argued that engagement is not wellbeing? Is there a middle ground? What additional information would you want before making the decision?

Exercise 33 (Group Discussion) The chapter connects Snapchat's design to the developmental psychology of adolescence, suggesting that teenagers are particularly vulnerable to certain engagement mechanics because of their developmental stage. Does this mean that social media platforms should be designed differently for teenage audiences? What would age-appropriate design look like in practice?

Exercise 34 (Group Discussion) Snap Map, as described in the chapter, was criticized for converting implicit social information (who is hanging out with whom) into explicit, real-time, cartographic form. Is there a meaningful ethical distinction between the information itself and its presentation format? Is seeing your friends on a map materially worse than hearing that they are hanging out without you?

Exercise 35 (Group Discussion) The chapter discusses the gap between Snapchat's founding philosophy and its monetization requirements. This tension is described as structural rather than unique to Snap. Discuss whether it is possible for an advertising-supported social media platform to genuinely prioritize user wellbeing. What structural changes would be necessary? Are those changes compatible with the current business model?