Why Teens Keep Confessing to Murders on Snapchat

We hear of crimes involving teenage social media use with depressing regularity, whether it's livestreaming an alleged rape on Periscope or a Brazilian Twitter video purporting to show a gang rape. But Snapchat seems to have assumed a unique role when it comes to cataloguing and disseminating teen acts of violence. In Britain, two teenage girls used the app to record a five-hour attack on a vulnerable woman and posted smiling images from the back of a police van. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania a teenager allegedly shot his classmate in the face, before sending a Snapchat image of him posing with the body.

Although it's true that only the most nightmarish cases make the news, there may be something inherent in Snapchat's functionality that attracts these incidents. Dr Shakuntala Banaji of the London School of Economics questions whether the ephemerality of the app is a contributing factor. "There's something about how instantaneous it is, which means that teens don't have a change to reconsider. With Snapchat, you put something out and 50 people see it and copy it to their phones before you've even thought about it."

Banaji feels the immediacy of apps such as Snapchat can be dangerous for teenagers, particularly those with mental health issues. "You aren't able to go back once something's been put out there, which is troubling. Back when we had diaries or blogs, you could edit and take things down. But with Snapchat, that 'stop and rethink' button is disabled. So the drunken photograph or the topless photo that goes viral, and the misery that's caused by all of that, is because you're unable to think, 'Yesterday I did that, but today I don't want to.'"

Dr Victoria Nash of the Oxford Internet Institute also thinks that Snapchat's functionality encourages teenagers to be irresponsible. "The sheer ephemerality of something like Snapchat means you can take a few more risks, because in theory it's not easily shared by other people. It encourages you to be a bit more bold; to say something outrageous."

"The pressures of Snapchat are greater because it's so immediate," she adds. "There can be a lot less thought involved, because it disappears so quickly. Whereas with Facebook, teens will think more carefully about how they curate their online identities, deleting posts that haven't done well."

Nash points to research showing how social media can be used as a cry for help, and suggests that teens use Snapchat as a way to reach out in times of crisis. "It doesn't surprise me that kids turn to the platforms they use regularly, like Snapchat, in moments of duress. You use them all the time, so why wouldn't you use it at this point?" While teenagers can understand how their online and offline lives interrelate, they aren't able to fully grasp the long-term implications. "They might not have a strong sense of what forever means. What will last, and what will have an impact on individuals. What will you regret doing? For me, that's a problem."

For Banaji, the urge to record a crime—even your own—through social media can be traced back to our earliest ancestors. "From time immemorial, from when we would draw on rocks in caves, we've revealed criminal acts through some point of media."

While crimes being shared on social media are still thankfully rare, Dr Banaji thinks we need to focus more on the everyday hate being shared via Snapchat. "It's the layer below the sensational layer: the bullying in the playground or the public shaming of your classmate. It's not even considered a crime often, but it's that which really disturbs me. It's not the fault of Snapchat as a mechanism.

"But in a society which really cared about young people there would be places they could go to talk about their feelings, and we would teach them not to do these things to each other."