Snapchat seems like the perfect medium for sending sexy photos. The images self-destruct within seconds of being opened (except for when they don’t), and users are automatically alerted when a recipient decides to take a screenshot (though there are loopholes to notification). That might be why Snapchat has gotten a reputation for being the sexting capital of the smartphone universe — but, according to a new study, the app doesn’t have quite the population of sexting users you might expect. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Snapchat is yet another hub for selfies and pictures of people’s cats.Researchers at the University of Washington polled 127 adult Snapchat users to find out the most popular ways people use the app, given its nearly exponential growth in recent months. Despite the study’s small sample size, it offers important insights about how the estimated 8 million Snapchat choose to snap — which they do about 350 million times a day, in total. As the researchers found, the content of those snaps isn’t quite what you’d expect: despite Snapchat’s reputation for being “illicit,” only 1.6 percent of respondents used the app primarily for sending sensitive or sexual material. For the most part, people use Snapchat simply to be silly.
http://www.salon.com/2014/07/14/study_most_people_use_snapchat_for_cat_photos_and_selfies_not_sexting/