New study reveals how young people are influenced by gamification features on Snapchat

Why study Snapchat’s gamification features?

Snapchat is widely used by teenagers as a messaging service but it also offers many other features. Some of these can be classified as gamification features which reward a user’s interactions with the app with points, scores or a certain status or level.

Previous research shows that gamification features play a role in attracting and retaining the attention of users. For example, consider attention capturing damaging patterns which exploit users’ attention, causing them to spend more time on a platform than they want. This is accompanied by loss of awareness of time and regret afterwards. Moreover, these patterns can facilitate or even reward excessive smartphone use.

By researching these patterns, more insight can be created into the impact that they have on young people, what significance these patterns have in their social life and what influence these features have on unwanted screen time. This helps to provide policy advice and support Bits of Freedom’s and EDRi’s position on the upcoming Digital Fairness Act (DFA), which will attempt to regulate addictive elements of social media. Features aimed at constantly attracting and retaining attention from users undermine their autonomy. Users should be able to choose whether or not to use these features.

Research and findings

The gamification features of Snapchat that were studied included:

• Snapstreak: counts each consecutive day that two users send each other a Snap. The number appears on their chat, accompanied by a fire emoji. When one of the users misses a day, the streak is broken.
• Friend emojis: These emojis appear on a chat with another user and are assigned based on the interaction they have with each other. For example, there is a Friend emoji indicating whether two users are “besties”, which means they send each other the most Snaps.
• Snapscore: This score is on the user’s profile, visible to friends. The more activity on the app, the more points are added to their score.
• Games in chat conversations: When recording a Snap, the user chooses a lens (like a filter) with a game built in. The receiver can answer this Snap with the same lens, in order to compete in the game.

An online questionnaire was completed by 300 young people between the ages of 13-21 and eight young people were interviewed. This combination enabled the study to make statements about percentages of the target group who have a certain experience and provided underlying explanations.

One of the most important findings was that although most young people are satisfied with their screen time on Snapchat, some (26% of respondents) find it is too high. This is mainly due to the many messages they receive and want to view from friends, and the pressure they feel from their friends to respond quickly. If young people were able to choose which gamification features they wanted to use, more than half of the interviewees wouldn’t choose Friends-emojis, the Snapscore and games in chat conversations. A substantial proportion (42% of respondents) would also choose to get rid of the Snapstreak.

At the same time, most young people (40% of the respondents) are neutral about the idea of getting more choice freedom when it comes to gamification features on Snapchat, for example by being able to turn them on and off. Others think a choice would be beneficial for younger people who are more sensitive to exposure to these features, and explained that this was true for them when they were younger.

Many young people are actively maintaining Snapstreaks (86% of respondents). Among other things, this is due to the fact that they find it wasteful to break a high streak because it takes a lot of time to reach the same number again. They also feel pressure from others to extend the streak: they are afraid to disappoint them and sometimes get actively reminded by the other person. Moreover, 51% of those who have Snapstreaks would feel bad if the other person breaks the Snapstreak. 25% of them have paid at least once to restore a broken Snapstreak (which costs €0.99 per streak). Some of the young people (33% of those with a streak) experience that the Snapstreak affects their screen time. With many, the continuation of the Snapstreak happens automatically, because they chat and Snap with their friends daily. But for some, extending Snapstreaks is actually a reason to open Snapchat every day and it can work as a trigger to be more on their phones. After extending their Snapstreaks, they get distracted by other parts in the app or on their phone.

The respondents cared less about the other gamification features (Friend Emojis, Snapscore and Games in chat conversations) and these therefore have minimal influence on their screen time. However, these elements cause some users to compare themselves with and to judge others. For example: when they lose the Friend Emoji that stands for #1 best friends, they get curious with whom the other person is now “best friends” and why. With regard to the Snapscore, there is a certain stigma to having a very low or very high Snapscore. A low Snapscore indicates a fake account or having no friends, and a high score indicates someone who flirts with a lot of different people. Because of misogynistic views, the latter is considered particularly negative for women.

What next?

The majority of participants in this study do not notice any significant effect of the specific gamification features (alone) on their screen time. This aligns with previous research into addictive design. This showed that the emergence of an addiction is highly dependent on the person, and that a specific design technique alone (such as a gamification feature) can not be assigned as ‘addictive’. Instead, it involves the interplay of all design choices within an app that can stimulate excessive smartphone use.

Although the majority of respondents do not experience negative effects of the gamification features, it is important to pay attention to the group that is affected. Some of them experience more pressure and end up having more screen time on Snapchat than they want. Legislation and policy should protect vulnerable groups. The study recommends that platforms:

• Define gamification features on social media platforms in legislation
• Make gamification features on social media optional
• Provide transparent information to users about how gamification features work.

The upcoming Digital Fairness Act offers an excellent opportunity to include measures on gamification for social media. The purpose of this law is to formulate measures surrounding manipulative and addictive design on online platforms. This research report is shared with policy makers so they can take the results into consideration when developing this law.

Contribution by: Chitra Mohanlal, Platform researcher, EDRi member, Bits of Freedom (BoF)