Snapchat Elicits More Jealousy than Facebook: A Comparison of Snapchat and Facebook Use

Abstract

Recent news in the media has suggested that younger people are using popular social media such as Facebook less and are quickly adopting newer media, such as the self-destructing app Snapchat. Snapchat is unique in that it erases messages several seconds after they have been sent, affording its users a higher level of privacy. Yet, little research exists on Snapchat use in general, let alone its broader psychological implications. This article offers a preliminary comparison of Snapchat and Facebook use and psychological effects on romantic jealousy. General motives for using Snapchat and Facebook are examined, as well as the nature of the content that Snapchat users most frequently share. Further, because of the differences in privacy and persistence of information, potential psychological effects in the domain of romantic jealousy are also examined, which has been widely studied on Facebook in the last few years. Findings show that the main difference in motives were that Snapchat was used more for flirting and finding new love interests, whereas Facebook was still the main social networking site used for keeping in touch with friends. Further, when presenting users with a series of potentially jealousy provoking scenarios, Snapchat elicited higher levels of jealousy than did Facebook. These findings are explained based on an affordance approach.

Snapchat memory and youth digital sexual cultures: mediated temporality, duration and affect

“…Utz et al's (2015) study of jealousy and Snapchat affirms the popular opinion that Snapchat's ephemerality, as well as its privacy, are key drivers for flirtatious or sexual communications.…”

“…(CNN, January 2013) and 'Will Snapchat's new update stop people from sexting using the app? ' (Telegraph, September 2015), Snapchat gained early notoriety as the so-called app built for 'sexting', its quick-to-vanish imagery being seen as the ideal medium for transmitting explicit content (see, for example, Poltash 2013; Roesner et al 2014; Utz et al 2015). Returning to the 'Freak of the week' song lyrics above, Snapchat has become embedded in a sexual lexicon adapted to account for time, documentation and memory.…”

“…Jealousy has been identified as particularly rife on Snapchat (Utz et al 2015); not necessarily an individualised jealousy but rather a transpersonal force due to the app's ability to rank relationships. We propose that the particular fluxes and flows of this emotion can be compared to a specific representation of duration drawn by Bergson -namely, sympathy.…”

A systematic review of romantic jealousy in relationships

“…it was found that women are more involved in these activities when they feel jealous (Muise, Christofides, & Desmarais, 2014). However, it was found that snapchat can produce more jealousy than Facebook as compared to other social networks, thereby paving the pathway to other forms of interactions and data collection (Utz, Muscanell, & Khalid, 2015).…”

Jealousy Levels in Response to Infidelity-Revealing Facebook Messages Depend on Sex, Type of Message and Message Composer: Support for the Evolutionary Psychological Perspective

“…The virtual worlds created by modern technology are fertile grounds to test the explanatory power of such fundamental tenets of evolutionary theory. One such theory, sex differences in jealousy manifestation (Buss 2000;Buss et al 1992), can be explored by accessing social media such as Facebook and Snapchat (Utz et al 2015) or by measuring reaction to infidelity-revealing mobile phone messages (Dunn and McLean 2015). There are currently a staggering 1.94 billion active Facebook users worldwide, 1.15 billion of which are active daily and this figure continues to rise relentlessly (Facebook,5 March 17).…”