I'm old so I've missed the Snapchat wave...but I've slowly been getting into Instagram, after having initially dismissed it since I used to spend enough time on Flickr. Most of the students I know use Instagram regularly, as do many of my friends my age, even the ones who were once big FB users and have since dropped out.<p>I like Instagram's "feel", and I imagine Snapchat's is similar. Its main point of sharing is tied to a low-friction hardware feature (using the mobile camera, then picking a filter) and so just posting something, anything, is easy. Unlike a banal Tweet, a banal Instagram photo just sits there to be looked at, and so you don't have to worry too much about being judged harshly (with Twitter, most novices fear that the format constrains their "deep" thoughts to superficialities...which is partially true)...And even if photos are worth a thousand words, their domain is relatively constrained. It's hard to stumble onto political/divisive content the way you can on Facebook or Twitter, and there's less room for content-sharers to bloviate about their lives (since some of them are confident in their visual skill to think that their photo alone says it all). You can just lazily browse the stream, contribute something if you feel like it, then get back to life. So for an older generation that grew up in the age when blogging was hot...there's a kind of appeal in having online social networks being so loose and "shallow"...then you can get back to real life and not be so obsessed over how all of your high school friends are now married with two beautiful babies and living in a perfect house according to their Facebook feed.<p>The effect of this ephemeralness is probably different to the younger crowd, though, who may have less incentive/discipline to peel away from their phones.