Automatic Archiving versus Default Deletion

TLDR

Snapchat’s default deletion of content shortly after viewing, combined with friend‑adding features, enables everyday, mundane conversation, reduces self‑consciousness, and encourages playful interaction. The authors investigate how Snapchat’s ephemerality creates a rich design space for mechanisms, levels, and domains of temporary communication. Through interviews with 25 users, the study shows that ephemerality shapes practices, and that screenshot saving with sender notification supports complex norms that preserve ephemerality while allowing meaningful capture.

Abstract

Unlike most social media, where automatic archiving of data is the default, Snapchat defaults to ephemerality: deleting content shortly after it is viewed by a receiver. Interviews with 25 Snapchat users show that ephemerality plays a key role in shaping their practices. Along with friend-adding features that facilitate a network of mostly close relations, default deletion affords everyday, mundane talk and reduces self-consciousness while encouraging playful interaction. Further, although receivers can save content through screenshots, senders are notified; this selective saving with notification supports complex information norms that preserve the feel of ephemeral communication while supporting the capture of meaningful content. This dance of giving and taking, sharing and showing, and agency for both senders and receivers provides the basis for a rich design space of mechanisms, levels, and domains for ephemerality.