Snap and tell!

Mapping the moves

It is said that privacy in the digital era just happens to be a myth. True that. Social media has become the go-to place for different topics — from geopolitics to what your friend is doing right now. 

Updating one’s status to reflect what they are currently doing, the music they are listening to and what they are eating are just a few instances of sharing personal information with a large audience.

However, people doing this do not realise the potential danger.

One of the latest examples of oversharing comes in the form of Snapchat's newest feature, ‘Snap Map’, that took the internet by storm recently.

 Just like the name denotes, this feature enables its users to locate their friends on a real time basis — with the help of ‘actionmoji’ or ‘bitmoji’. 

Ever since it was launched last month, this feature is receiving a lot of mixed reactions. While some are sceptical and questioning the safety and privacy policies, there are others who find it all quite fascinating.

Chandini Hemdev, a student and wedding planner, says, “I really liked the feature. It is helpful when someone is trying to coordinate plans with friends. Though privacy is a concern, one can always opt for the ‘ghost mode’. This will conceal a few things though I am not very sure how much help that will be.”

Talking from a wedding planner’s point of view, she says that this feature can be great for a business set up, especially for event planners. “Since this feature allows one to go around the world, one can get a glimpse of the event without being physically present there.”

Jeevitha P Raju, a soft skills  trainer and an active Snapchat user, too finds this feature quite quirky and different.

She says, “My brother and I explored the feature when it was launched and we found it pretty cool. The ‘bitmoji’ is something that we found really unique and it was easy to understand as well.”

Apart from privacy concerns, she asserts on an important point that more or less the entire world has fallen prey to — ‘nomophobia’, another word for smartphone addiction.  Jeevitha says that features like these only further this condition.

“On the brighter side, Snapchat comes up with really cool features almost every day. This new feature can turn out to be a great marketing tool and can even be used for movie promotions,” she adds.

However, not everyone is too keen on the new addition. Caroline Rodrigues, a student of St Joseph’s College Autonomous, is of the opinion that this feature has raised the possibility of stalking.

“I find this feature extremely creepy. People can stalk others even when they themselves are on the ‘ghost mode’. They still have access to the map and can see their active friends, who have no way of  knowing this,” says Caroline.

Nevertheless, she feels that every new feature on any social media platform has its own pros and cons and it depends on an individual to use it with caution.