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My 12 year old and her group of friends are hooked on Snapchat. No idea it had reached the University/College level. My understanding is the kids love it because several parents insist that their children never delete their texts until the parent has reviewed all of them each night.

People will share more when they know that content goes away. Makes a lot of sense but would have never thought of it that way prior.

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I am not one that checks my daughter's txts every night, but I do educate her that her actions can have farther reaching consequences than a young person might think at the time. Doesn't the false sense of privacy that this app creates give you concern that your daughter and her group of friends might overshare and create problems for themselves or others? The content does not go away, there is no way to prevent that. There have already been several workarounds (hacks) to persist the images being sent and I could think of a few more low tech solutions (second camera to take a photo of the snapchat screen is one that comes to mind).

A lot of things worry me about my daughter(s) and the technology that they use. It sounds like you take the same approach. I can't tackle each new app in a tactical fashion so I can only drive the 30,000 foot level stuff. "Would you be proud of this if someone else saw it? Do you think that's hurtful to other folks involved?" etc so that she asks herself those questions. Honestly the ones that seem most vulnerable are those ones where their parents are micromanaging - but that's probably just symptomatic of larger issues.

All those are much easier to fake, and thus deny.

It started at the college level. For months it was literally only on Stanford's campus (where the founders are students).

Did not know. Thanks for sharing.

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