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Comment by virgilp | Hacker News Reader

If you're just interested in the data and not the long article, here it is:

https://www.scribd.com/document/368759484/Snapchat-Data-Lore...

Thanks for posting this. I am not bullish on SNAP but I highly encourage people to look at that data here. It is a much less dramatic story than the article, a lot of the data actually looks pretty good and at this point the data is fairly out of date anyway (a full quarter has passed since it was gathered). The one graph that is included in the story, showing that Maps is not being used much, is the only truly negative graph I could find.

The range of average minutes per day on the app is between 32 and 37 minutes. That's insane and honestly pretty sad, especially when you consider how few people only use snapchat. How much time is wasted across all the different social media apps?!

Why do you think it's wasted? Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted. Most people use it to message their friends, and communication with people you like is one of the key joys of living

I mean, how much time do you "waste" on HN? :)

Where is the line though? What is genuine enjoyment versus a dopamine hit, like a mouse pounding on the lever to get as much cocaine or electrical impulses possible? It’s all chemical reactions in the end I suppose (says my internal nihilist).

I think a key difference is that Snapchat is not a feed app. There's no endless scrolling to waste 30 minutes on to give you that dopamine hit. The time spent is mostly being spent as a messaging app I suspect if you look at the levels of use of app features. Do you think it's a problem to spend half an hour a day texting + sending pictures to people?

Not endless, but there is a feed of snap stories always.

Not if you don’t have any friends! Boom, problem solved.

Any idea what happened around July 7 that would've caused those dips in almost every chart? I initially thought the July 4 holiday, but I would imagine more people would actually be using Snapchat on that day. Perhaps it's the hangover day on July 5th?

Something that dramatic looks to me like a logging/data error

Wow extremely interesting. Why are all of the graphs very cyclic?

Probably due to higher use on weekends, which you can actually see in the chart of snaps sent by day of week.

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