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It is no secret that our generation has a serious screen addiction. We love our phones, tablets, computers, TVs and anything with an LED.

Our elders are constantly nagging us about what we are doing – from reading to emailing to going on “liking” sprees via various forms of social media. The latest of these generational doings is “snapchatting.”

Essentially, the Snapchat app allows anyone with a smartphone to take a picture and draw on it or write one line of text and send it to friends to view for up to 10 seconds.

To view the picture, the receiver presses on the notification and the picture will disappear after the allotted time.

I thought it was silly at first until I was having full conversations via Snapchat. The adorable icon “Ghostface Chillah” is inviting and represents a brand new concept.

“What’s the point?” my mom and so many others have asked, and I really could not think of an appropriate or even witty response. I just told them that it is funny to send silly faces and amusing pictures to my friends.

For instance, I was working eight hours a day over break and Snapchat was the perfect remedy to my boredom. My friends sent me snaps when they were awake, eating, playing with pets, visiting friends, watching TV and so on. It is like FaceTime texting.

Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy are the two Stanford students responsible for this marvelous addition to my social media family. Their legacy is 50 million snaps being shared each day. Snapchat exploded much more rapidly than Instagram because it is not a network. It is one-on-one communication.

Spiegel and Murphy realized how photos are such a fundamental part of our daily lives – they just added a self-destruct button.

Right now I have 4,170 pictures on my iPhone all taken since April when I had to reboot my phone. I do not think I even had a total of 1,000 pictures in all of high school, even when MySpace was popular and Facebook was on the rise.

With an iPhone, it is extremely simple to just take a picture – or five – of anything and everything.

My Snapchat high score is 4,848. You get 12 points per snap, and if you send three in a row to the same person it is worth 20 points. Essentially this means I have sent at least 250 Snapchats, which is low compared to most of my friends.

Our generation simply loves pictures. Kids now have a different understanding of themselves because they see who they are beyond a mirror reflection.

This is a paradigm shift our parents did not grow up with. They do not understand the appeal of sending “selfies” and other photos every 20 seconds.

For us it is fun, but there are the obvious concerns surrounding the fact that anyone with Apple iOS or Android can send pictures to their friends that will ultimately disappear. The only way they could be saved is if someone took a screen shot – but do not worry. The app informs the sender of such a breach.

Anna Brenoff of The Huffington Post wrote, “Certainly, it is the perfect tool for sexting. You get to show off your privates and there’s no evidence left for extortion later. It also means that your Mom, who is doing her best to police what you do online, doesn’t get to see what you send your friends.”

Brenoff has a 12-year-old son, so her policing is going to be more extreme than any college student’s parents (I hope). But she also has a point: Snapchats that are Rated R or include illegal substances do exist, even though the app was made with good intentions.

There is no way to punish anyone if they send anything inappropriate, harmful, rude, etc., but it is also very easy to just not accept any more snaps from that person.

Internet privacy is a common topic, and I believe more teens know how to deal with it than in the past. Snapchat is for friends, not enemies.

Just as adamant as our generation is about sharing everything about our waking hours, our parents are quick to assume the worst. They simply do not understand instant sharing, which ultimately causes them to worry more than needed.

The longevity of the app is questionable, but for now it is the one way my friends will ever see a picture of me without makeup on as I am still waking up.

Even if it is just a fad, it has revolutionized communication by making instant messaging more personal.