
Is Snapchat only used for sexting? We asked 5,000 people to find out - ckelly
http://survata.com/blog/is-snapchat-only-used-for-sexting-we-asked-5000-people-to-find-out/
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Alex3917
The methodology of the survey is somewhat weak. Snapchat has only been popular
for about a year, whereas sexting has been common for 5+ years now. Not only
does this mean that users have had a much longer time to sext via SMS than
snapchat, but because it's a self-reported survey it's even worse; users are
much more likely to admit to something the longer ago it happened in the past,
which skews the data even further. It would have been much better to ask users
whether they had sexted within the past six months or whatever.

~~~
awenger
Survata co-founder here.

Good point. We had the same thought and did consider running a survey variant
with the fixed 6 mo time frame. And we may just give it a try to see how the
results are affected.

Even with the current wording, I find the SMS comparison useful. It
demonstrates that people are willing to admit to sexting in the anonymous
Survata survey format. I like your hypothesis about greater willingness to
admit to "bad behavior" in the distant past than in the recent past. My
intuition is that anonymity weakens that effect, but we'll have to measure to
know for certain.

~~~
Alex3917
"I like your hypothesis about greater willingness to admit to "bad behavior"
in the distant past than in the recent past. My intuition is that anonymity
weakens that effect, but we'll have to measure to know for certain."

If you look at this report on the validity of self-reported drug use, it goes
into the issue of how people are more likely to admit bad behavior that
happened long ago. Anonymity probably does ameliorate the problem, but I'm
guessing that it would still be significant.

[http://archives.drugabuse.gov/pdf/monographs/monograph167/do...](http://archives.drugabuse.gov/pdf/monographs/monograph167/download167.html)

~~~
jseliger
Great link—thanks for posting it—too few people cite the sources for their
beliefs. In a related context, "Truth and consequences: using the bogus
pipeline to examine sex differences in self-reported sexuality" discusses how
"some of the sex differences in self-reports of sexuality are not due to
actual sex differences in behavior, but rather to differences in reporting as
a function of differential normative expectations for men and women":
[http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Truth+and+consequences%3a+usin...](http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Truth+and+consequences%3a+using+the+bogus+pipeline+to+examine+sex...-a0101530208)
.

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cooperadymas
It seems to reason that people who use SnapChat for sexting are doing so to
hide the fact that they're sexting, so they might be less likely to admit to
it (even on an anonymous survey). Someone who uses text messaging may feel
less compelled to hide it at all. This would be especially true for kids
(under 18) since you also ask the age on the survey.

Not sure how big a role this might actually play in the results.

~~~
ckelly
OP here. Thanks for the feedback. We only surveyed respondents 18+ for this
survey. We agree kids under 18 would have been more likely to lie about this
type of behavior.

~~~
taylorbuley
I've read of a technique where for self-reported statistics you mix in a non-
pertinent question with a known probability, using Bayes to extract the
original prior probability.

For example, instead of asking kids "do you smoke pot?" you ask that of 80% of
people and the other 20% get "do you own a dog?"; the surveyor has no idea
which question was asked but knows the overall population of dog owners.

Does this technique have a name that you know of and did you consider it?

~~~
benmanns
I know of a method in which you give each respondent a coin and ask them to
flip it in secret. If the coin lands heads, answer "Yes," if not, answer
honestly. Then, if you ask a question like "Have you sexted?" or "Do you use
drugs?", you may get survey results that look like 60% yes and 40% no. You
subtract 50% from the yes count to account for the coin toss and get accurate
overall results, but the participants have plausible deniability.

However, I can't remember the name of it, nor the article I read about it, and
Google isn't helping.

~~~
halter73
Interesting. I imagine this method would be particularly helpful for non-
anonymized surveys.

Obviously, this would only be helpful if you don't have a good idea of how
many people would lie in the first place. It also depends on the assumption
that people won't lie given this plausible deniability.

The biggest problem I see is that this could only increase the variance of
your survey results. The way I see it you have three binomial distributions
base on three random variables:

    
    
      1. The number of people who would answer yes to the survey question if they were honest.
      2. The number of people who lied. (This is clearly not independent to the first random variable)
      3. The number of people who flipped heads. (This clearly is independent)
    

The problem is that coin flipping has the highest possible variance of any
binomial distribution for any given sample size. So even if the variance
created by people lying is completely eliminated, it would be more than
counteracted by the variance introduced by the coin flipping.

I still really like this method since the increased variance is a moot point
if giving people plausible deniability is the best way to normalize for lying.
And you can always increase your confidence in the resulting proportion by
increasing your sample size.

It would be interesting to run anonymized and non-anonymized surveys with the
coin flip and without to try to determine how much anonymization reduces lying
on various survey questions.

One nitpick: You should subtract 50% from the yes count and then multiply by
two. So in your example, you would expect that 20% of those surveyed truly
sexted or use drugs.

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marvin
No way I'm trusting this informal survey unless they have a plausible, data-
backed explanation for the supposed huge gender disparity in sexting.

The only halfway plausible explanation is that the 3.4% of men who are gay or
bi all sext with each other. In other words, a large number of the respondents
lied and the data is invalid.

That said, anecdotal evidence (the people I talk do every day) strongly
indicates that people _are_ in fact occasionally using Snapchat for other
things than sexting

~~~
saalweachter
Hasn't prior research established that men on average overstate sexual
experience and women on average understate? I think I've seen this come up in
surveys of number of partners and frequency, so it doesn't surprise me at all
that it would happen in sexting surveys.

Even assuming all of the participants are being truthful, you'll have some
problems with definitions not being shared by the participants. The classic
example is "Does oral sex count?" Men, for whom a large number of partners is
(sometimes) culturally good, may be inclined to count it. Women, for whom a
large number of partners is (sometimes) culturally bad, might not count it.

With respect to sexting, imagine a woman sends a man a picture of herself in a
low-cut dress. The man might say, "she was totally sexting me", and believe
it, the woman might say, "I was fully dressed in an outfit seen by hundreds of
people at a party, how can that be sexting?", and believe it.

~~~
analog
_Hasn't prior research established that men on average overstate sexual
experience and women on average understate_

How would you be able to tell?

~~~
saalweachter
In the case of systematic lying it'd be hard, but when the problem is
definitions -- what counts as sex and sexting -- you just need to ask more and
more detailed questions and then the reasons become obvious.

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TillE
> Frequently cited uses were to “send funny pictures to my friends” or “make
> silly faces for my friends” or “send jokes to my friends.”

I don't mean to be a grumpy old man, but this seems even more pointless than
usual. If it's _not_ being used for sexual photos, then it's surely a fad
that's going to die in a few months.

All that other crap can be done via normal messaging; there's precious little
reason to use Snapchat except that it's (briefly, for now) the popular new
thing.

~~~
untog
_I don't mean to be a grumpy old man, but this seems even more pointless than
usual._

To disagree with mmakunas, I don't think people care about the privacy angle
so much- I think it's about creating something entirely disposable, and the
freedom that gives you. It's like an anti-Instagram- no filters and perfectly
positioned shots, just point, shoot, send.

I'm not sure what the exactly psychology of it is or whether it even matters
that the photos disappear but a _lot_ of teens use Snapchat. Just take a look
at the demographics of a Twitter search:

[https://twitter.com/search?q=snapchat%20me&src=typd](https://twitter.com/search?q=snapchat%20me&src=typd)

Even if Snapchat doesn't do anything that normal messaging can't, they've
clearly packaged it in such a way that it's tremendously popular. After all,
if it was possible with normal messaging, why wasn't anyone doing it until
Snapchat came about?

~~~
mmakunas
Interesting point.

 _I think it's about creating something entirely disposable, and the freedom
that_

Part of that freedom comes from the level of privacy I think. But from looking
at those tweets maybe I'm over estimating how people are _explicitly_ thinking
about privacy.

It just goes to show that is not always about creating something where the
individual bits of functionality are new. Sometime the most compelling thing
is putting a novel spin on what we already do and building a network of users
around that.

------
lawnchair_larry
Survata is a YC company that uses those spammy "survey walls", forcing users
to answer a survey to get content they want. This data is garbage.

~~~
ckelly
Survata co-founder here.

Thanks for your comment. We're constantly testing the accuracy of our network,
and building technology to screen out respondents who are lying to us. To
date, the results are good. For example, when we ask respondents "Which time
zone are you in?" or "Who is the president of the United State" we see around
97% accuracy. We see this as evidence of quality data.

~~~
tomprince
Although, questions with non-personally identifiable data or more likely to
get honest answers.

------
prawks
Interesting relevant article: [http://blog.garrytan.com/tenth-grade-tech-
trends-my-survey-d...](http://blog.garrytan.com/tenth-grade-tech-trends-my-
survey-data-says-s)

And its HN discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5027306>

I performed a few Google searches on Snapchat. I was very surprised to see the
fanaticism around it being used by young people for Sexting alone. The above
article paints a much different picture.

~~~
posabsolute
people also lie, when you just sent a sex picture and they ask you if you
juste sent that, I'm incline to think you will say you didn't.

Personally i don't trust their stats, it's lower than the average for text
messages, which really does not make any sense to me.

~~~
ckelly
OP here. Thanks for the feedback. We also asked respondents about sexting over
text messaging, and got a similar rate (26%) to other studies about
sexting[1]. Of course, as we note, this is entirely self-reported behavior and
not observed behavior.

[1]<http://cbsloc.al/Nv7WPR>

~~~
DannyBee
"We did a survey where we asked 1000 respondents about whether they lied in
survey responses. 100% answered 'no'"

~~~
ghshephard
Well, that actually might be the case.

More interesting would be if they answered, "yes"

------
ianstallings
Wow, a lot of denial on this particular topic. Let's be real. Even facebook is
used a lot for hookups. All mediums will have sex on them because we are
sexual by nature. So of course this medium will be exploited fully and denied
in public because it's a sensitive topic. Why dwell? Who cares? Are we such
prudes?

And come on, just asking them? Go ask the guys in the head shop what kind of
pipes they are selling. Tobacco pipes of course. But we didn't just fall off
the turnip truck.

------
rburhum
Can somebody explain to me what is stopping someone from hitting the power +
home button simultaneously and creating a photo of whatever is in the screen
effectively working around the "self destruct" nature of Snapchat?

~~~
svachalek
I believe it detects the action and rats you out although it can't actually
stop it. I don't use the app but there was a story recently on some people
figuring out a way to evade detection.

------
MikeKusold
I've received ~10 snapchats a day for the past month, and I have never
received a sexting photo via snapchat. Instead my friends send pictures of:
food, landscapes, people they are with, pets, etc...

Basically the point of Snapshot is to share mundane photos without the other
person being able to share with their friends all the boring photos you send
them throughout the day.

------
azundo
In terms of the comparison with SMS, this survey also seems to miss that
sexting via text (words) is very different than sexting via snapchat
(pictures). I'm sure a much higher percentage of the population is more
comfortable with the former than latter, which doesn't make the comparison all
that surprising.

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mijustin
It's common wisdom that Snapchat appeals particularly to those _under_ the age
of 18. This study focused only on "respondents aged 18 to 29".

What people (read: the media) really want to know is "are teens sexting with
Snapchat?" Naturally, it's harder to get survey results for that demographic.

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moconnor
Nice to see the old maxim still holds true: "Every title phrased as a question
can be answered with: no."

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siculars
Not only. I just started using it a few weeks ago and I can say it has
legitimate uses outside of sexting. The ability to write on an image or draw
on it is quite useful.

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keefe
imho there is something here with a neural correlate related to gambling, e.g.
I send my mom/boss/teacher a funny face picture or I send my crush a love note
with an expiration date and I can cash in on the thrill with a low chance of
the risk of exposure

