As technology has progressed and the internet has become more present in everyday life, many kids have gravitated towards using social media to communicate with friends from school and people from around the world. The ASB president ran a poll asking students what social media app they used most between Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. The most voted-for app was Instagram with 214 votes and second Twitter with 202 votes, followed by Snapchat getting 123 votes and 67 votes for Facebook.

For some students, social media is a way to look at things from a different perspective. A student from the tennis team, Savanna Medina, uses Snapchat mostly for messaging purposes, but it also helps her with her homework. Savanna explained that Snapchat is “A good way to communicate with people.”

Lauren Durate from the water polo and the swim team preferred Snapchat over the other apps due to it being a simple app and more original. “This app is my main source of communication and my phone is always blowing up with notifications,” but she appreciates that, “Snapchat saves my pictures and I can see and remember my memories.” However, Lauren also mentioned, “Snapchat can be bad because people can save your messages and send them to random people.”

Jaedin Lee from the girls’ basketball team enjoys Snapchat more for its more unique features. In particular, she likes using the various filters Snapchat has for photos.  She also likes it for the SnapMap, a feature that allows you to see where your friends are, because “You can see if your boyfriend is cheating on you.”

Some students interviewed preferred Snapchat but Instagram won the poll and offers a unique selection of things such as business platforms. For instance, students may lean towards Instagram over Snapchat because Instagram allows you to like a picture and comment on that picture, whereas Snapchat only allows the user to view the photo or video.

Students who use Instagram tend to have different interests than Snapchat users. Alexis Pedregon from the FFA program uses Instagram more than Snapchat, mostly running a Beatles and classic rock fan page. She prefers Instagram because, “You can make a page dedicated to anything.”

Bailie Tucker from the girl’s softball team uses Instagram more often because, “It’s busier and is constantly improving things in my feed.” If she can say one good thing about this app it’s that it “helps me keep in contact with friends I don’t get to see often”, and in her opinion a bad thing about it is that it “Can make a person or myself, self conscious if I were to see pictures or videos of friends at parties and I’m not there with them.”

Its apparent that Don Lugo students favor Instagram more than Snapchat. Snapchat and Instagram are similar in the same ways like they both offer face filters and messaging. On the other hand Instagram, offers more than Snapchat like such as liking a photo or being able to comment on a photo, but the choice is up to the user in this new age of technology.