What is a Snapchat Streak? | Reasons Behind Snapchat Streak Obsession

A Snapchat is a messaging app where you can send text messages and photos or videos to your friends, and your snaps and conversations disappear after recipients see it. This app is most famous among teens and youths to send snaps and share moments.

The unique features of this Snapchat are the snaps or text sent quickly disappears right after recipients see it, and it also allows you to know if someone takes a screenshot of your message. So, you can prevent yourself from getting your snaps or text leaked.

Thus, Snapchat users are increasing day by day, and the main reason for it is that snaps sent disappear permanently after viewing, and you get an alert if someone takes screenshots of your conversations.

If you wonder how to use Snapchat safely for you and your kids, go through the complete guide to Snapchat for parents. And if you want to know about Snapchat streaks, then read the below guide to Snapchat streaks.

What is a Snapchat Streak?

A Snapchat streak is a fire emoji along with a number shown next to the profile. The number shows you the number of days you have been sending snaps to each other. You can have a Snapchat streak when you send continuous snaps(photos or videos) to a friend for several consecutive days.

If you continue sending snaps to your friends without missing a day, then you will continue having a streak. But if you miss out on sending snaps or break the conversation, then you will lose streaks. Remember, only the snaps of photos or videos are count for streaks, not the text messages.

Having a long streak rewards you with special emojis like for streaks lasting 100 days, the "100" emoji, or for an extremely long streak, a mountain emoji instead of fire emoji.

How to Get and Keep a Snapstreak Going?

You and your friends need to send photos or video snaps to each other regularly to get Snapstreak. Only Snaps count towards a streak; chatting and texting do not. To keep your Snapstreak going, both you and your friends must have to send snaps regularly. If either your friends or you forget to send snap back within 24 hours, you both will lose your Snapstreak and start from 0.

So, if you don't want to lose your Snapstreak, then follow below few tips to keep going Snapstreak:

• Send regular snaps at least once in 24 hours to your friend and make sure that they also reply snaps to you.

• Check hourglass emoji in front of chatbox with your friends and remind them to return snap back before times off.

• If you have no snaps to send, you can use different stickers available in Snapchat and send them a blank screen photo. For example, turn on the camera, close the camera area with your fingers, then take a photo.
  Attach stickers like time or day available within Snapchat to that black screen photo and send them to your friends. Because the number of snaps you send matters rather than what snap you send.

• If you prefer chatting on Snapchat to send snaps, send one text message with a photo or video snaps to your friends, as text messages do not count for streaks. You need to send photos or videos to get Snap streaks.

How to Get Back Your Lost Snapchat Streak?

The hourglass icon indicates that you only have a short time to save your streak. If you or your friend didn't send any snaps to each other during the presence of the hourglass icon, then your streak dies, and you are not getting back your lost Snapchat streak.

However, if you think having sent snaps(not text messages) back and forth within 24 hours but lost your Snapstreak, it's a Snapchat error. In such a case, you can report to the Snapchat support.

For that, follow the below steps to report Snapchat Streak error:

Step 1: Open your Snapchat app.

Step 2: Go to Settings and tap on the Support section.

Step 3: Tap on the I Need Help option, and there you will see different popular topics; under it, select Snapstreaks.

Step 4: Scroll down to the last question: What if my Snapstreak has gone away…. Click on let us know.

Step 5: Then, a List of problems appears. Click on My Snapstreaks disappeared.

Step 6: A form displays and fills in all the information.

Step 7: Then Click on the SEND button. The Snapchat team will soon review your form, troubleshoot your problem, and get you back your lost Snapstreak.

Reasons Behind Teen Obsessions with Snapchat Streaks

Snapchat has provided a fun way of chatting and sharing moments with friends. The more you send snaps to each other in consecutive days, the more streaks you get.

So, Snapping back and forth between your particular contact is a necessity among teens for maintaining streaks. They compare their streak scores with other friends' rising competition. Here are few reasons behind teen obsessions with Snapchat Streaks:

Getting Streak Rewards

Snapchat rewards Snapchat users with new emojis depending on the number of streaks they maintain. Different emojis appear as the days passed and these Snapchat emojis carry different meanings with them.

For example, if you regularly send back and forth snaps for 100 days, you will get 100 emoji; likewise, you will get mountain emoji if you cross more than 100 days of sending snaps. Snapchat does not offer real prizes to Snap users; However, users are still obsessed with maintaining streaks.

So, just to get streak rewards and unlock new trophies, teens are obsessed with Snapchat streaks.

Get Highest Streak Score

More number of sending snaps means getting more streak scores. However, there is no leaderboard in Snapchat showing users with the highest streak scores; people self create groups and show their streak scores. This raises competition for getting the highest streak score among users, and they don't want to let their streak die at any cost.

So, they keep sending lots of snaps to particular contacts, but sometimes your contacts may get irritated with your bunch of snaps and ignore them. But to get the highest streak score, you ping on them and ask for a reply back snaps before hourglass appears.

Competence and Friendship

Among all the users, teens are more serious about Snapstreaks. They want to get the highest streak score which raises a sense of competition among them. Teen feels like more streak shows close friendship.

Children have a different friend circle, and they want to show that they have the best and closest friends. So, Teenagers take it as competition, and they want to have the highest streak score than another group of friends. When they discover that others have stronger friendships, they lower their self-esteem. So, it effects your teen’s self-esteem.

Tweens and teens start to measure their friendship with the number of streaks with their particular friend. And in case If they lost streaks someday with a particular friend, then they end their friendship in real life too. They feel like dying of streaks means no more friendship.

As a parent, you don't want your kids to decide on friendship based on streaks; that's silly. So, learn how to let your kids use social media properly and teach them how to choose friends. Make them aware of fake friends on social media.

Make Close Friends

Snapchat streaks sometimes work as an excuse to have a conversation with a particular friend. You may want to be close with a particular friend, so you keep sending snaps and asking them to send back snaps, not to lose streaks.

This may help to increase interaction and make close friends. You will be sending snaps and sharing moments, which can help to know each other better and build stronger friendships slowly.

Conclusion

To sum up, the Snapchat streak is just a way of sticking to the Snapchat app; it's not a serious thing to take on. Snapchat just offers you a better way of sharing moments with your friends and keeps you in touch every day. But, tweens and teens take these snap streaks seriously.

Snapping back and forth is like a compulsion for them. So, You may wonder if Snapchat is safe for your kids or not? You can use parental control apps like fenced.ai to monitor whether your kids are in danger with Snapchat or not.