Click-send.  Click-send.  Forget Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.  The newest social media craze doesn’t even require typing.  And it’s quickly become one of the most popular smartphone applications in the world, with approximately 60 million messages sent per day, according to The New York Times.

Snapchat is a popular smartphone application that allows users to send and receive photos with the guarantee that they won’t go anywhere else.  The application is steadily gaining popularity, primarily among teenage users.  The efficiency and availability of the free smartphone app has brought it popularity, skepticism and extraordinary press coverage.

Snapchat is most notable for the impermanence of its content.  “They look at it, they laugh, and then it’s gone,” said senior Joelle Destache, a frequent Snapchat user. This represents a shift in the existing social-media paradigm.  In the digital age, where everything and anything can be made very, very public, Snapchat offers some degree of security.  Photos are automatically deleted within a 1 to 10 second period after viewing, and the app notifies the sender immediately if the recipient takes a screen grab.

Snapchat was developed by a group of Stanford University programmers and released in September 2011. The software is a fairly small app with a cartoon ghost as its icon. What’s more, Snapchat is completely free and is not currently making a profit, though creator Evan Spiegel has hinted at plans to monetize soon with advertising.

Critics have pointed out Snapchat’s potential for sexting, but Spiegel has said time and time again that it is neither intended for nor particularly conducive to sexting.  Junior Charlie Rosenblum, a fairly new Snapchat user, says that while Snapchat sexting is a very real possibility, it’s not the point.  “A lot of people use anything for that kind of purpose,” he said, “but I think the majority doesn’t.”

Destache got the app early this winter, and uses it countless times a day.  She describes Snapchat as “real-time picture messaging.”  She says that the appeal of Snapchat lies in its efficiency and the range of messages one can communicate with it.  “You can really express what you’re trying to say to someone” with pictures of facial expressions, something that texting can’t do as easily.  She also often uses Snapchat to take pictures of the area around her in order to give friends a better idea of what’s going on.

In fact, the developers created the app as a response to modern social networking. The dissappearing photos help prevent lasting effects of often image-concious social media users. “People are living with this massive burden of managing a digital version of themselves,” Spiegel said in an interview with Forbes. “It’s taken all of the fun out of communicating.”

Whatever the deeper implications of Snapchat may be, Destache and Rosenblum use it for one simple reason.  “It’s kind of fun,” Rosenblum said.  That is, after all, the initial intent of the app.  Hopefully, the trappings will help make it safer.