Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app developed by Snap Inc., which is originally called Snapchat Inc. It is a mobile app for Android and iOS devices. The app is often called Snap by its users. The app has evolved from originally focusing on person-to-person photo sharing to presently featuring users’ “Stories”. The content is in chronological order, along with “Discover”. It also allows users to keep their photos in the “my eyes only”, which is also protected with a password. It has limited use of end-to-end encryption.

Evan Spiegel, Boby Murphy, and Reggie Brown are the original authors of Snapchat. It was released in September 2011. Snapchat has 82.0 MB size in Android phones and 223.1 MB in iOS. There are total 37 languages available on Snapchat. Some of them are English, Arabic, German, Greek, Korean, Japanese, Hindi, Marathi, Chinese, etc.

Primarily Snapchat was focused on private, person-to-person photo sharing. But now it is also used for a range of asks, including sending videos, live video chat, messaging. It includes photo sharing, instant messaging, video chat, and multimedia. Other features include the ability to add filters and AR-based lenses to snaps and shows live location on the world map. As of July 2021, Snapchat had 293 million daily active users, having 23% growth over a year. On average, more than four billion Snaps are sent daily.

In September 2015, an 18-year-old was using a Snapchat feature called “Lens” to record the speed she was driving her Mercedes C230 when she crashed into a Mitsubishi Outlander in Hampton, Georgia. Also during the 2020 lockdown to inhibit the spread of COVID-19 in France, the app emerged as a hub for the dissemination of revenge porn of underage girls.