Snapchat Trends You Should Know About

Wondering about Snapchat? Here's everything you need to know

Snapchat is an instant messaging and social networking app that has differentiated itself from competing apps like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It's one of the most popular apps that teens and young adults use these days to tell their friends what they're up to and chat back and forth.

If you're not familiar with Snapchat, take a look through the following summaries and links to get a glimpse of how to jump in on some of the biggest Snapchat trends.

Snapchat logo and icon on phone

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Get Started With Snapchat

First, get the latest version of Snapchat to make sure you have all the up-to-date features. After you create your account, add some friends either manually or by scanning their snapcodes. If you love checking out stories, add a few of the big brands on Snapchat too.

Now it's time to start chatting back and forth with your friends by snapping photos and videos or posting your photo and video snaps to your story. The more you snap with friends, the higher your Snapchat score will be.

Your Snapchat best friends are the friends you snap with the most, which might change over time according to who you snap and your snapping frequency. The more you snap with them, the more friend emojis and snap streaks you'll see in your conversations tab.

Take Advantage of the Best Snapchat Features

Once you start snapping, you won't want to stop. Don't forget to try out the selfie lenses to give your snaps some creative flair, and try out some funny snap ideas to make your friends laugh and loud. Swiping right on the lenses brings you to the Snappable games you can play with your friends.

Some lenses have music and sound effects built into them. Still, you can take video snaps with music playing from your phone. You can also swipe left or right on your snaps before you send them to apply fun filters.

Although Snapchat was designed for sharing photos and videos in the moment, you can upload saved photos and videos to send as snaps and save photo and video snaps before you send them using a feature called Memories. And if you close a snap too quickly after viewing it, you can instantly replay it to check it out one last time.

Want to get more social on Snapchat? Have a group video call with a bunch of your friends through the app or use the snap map to show your location and see other public snaps and stories from other users nearby.

Maintain Your Security and Privacy

It's important to ensure your security and privacy on a social app like Snapchat. For example, there are consequences for those who take screenshots of snaps they receive.

You might regret a snap you recently sent, so in this case, you may want to know whether there's anything you can do to delete a snap that was sent. You can also block users on Snapchat, unblock them, and see if anyone has blocked you.

Snapchat doesn't make it easy or possible to change your username for security reasons. And you can't use Snapchat with third-party apps anymore, even though this was possible in the past.

Try out a Few Snapchat Alternatives

Snapchat is great, but other apps have similar features. Check out these five Snapchat alternatives with face-tracking filters to expand your usage of funny faces.

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