Teacher sent “inappropriate” Snapchats to teenage student

It’s a parent’s worst nightmare, a cheater’s ultimate companion, a best friend when in need of a good laugh and one of the biggest marketing tools out there.

But the free mobile app Snapchat also has a dark side, as we are now seeing in Queensland where a 34-year-old teacher has been suspended after allegations of sending inappropriate messages to a 15-year-old girl.

The Toowoomba State High School teacher is facing charges of two counts of indecent treatment of a child under 16 after sending the randy pictures. He has now been suspended.

The controversy comes after another Queensland high-school teacher, Glen Utz, was suspended from teaching for a year after a tribunal ruled that he had sent inappropriate messages through Snapchat, and engaged in inappropriate physical behaviour during drama classes.

Mr Utz sent an image of himself captioned “Gym bitches!”, along with a vulgar gesture involving two fingers and his tongue, captioned “Stahp it”, said the Courier Mail.

For those who don’t know, Snapchat is the free mobile app that enables users to send quick images and videos that will disappear and be deleted after a few seconds. For most it’s harmless fun and a great way to communicate a good time among friends … but there is a catch!

If the recipient of the Snapchat is fast enough, they can take a sneaky screenshot of the sent image with their phone, preserving it… forever! Though the sender is notified by Snapchat if a screenshot has been taken, the screenshot functionality can leave the sender vulnerable to future repercussions, especially if the Snapchat sent was, what’s that word…oh yes, unsavory. For example, a nude selfie from a teacher?

Snapchat was created by two undergraduates at Stanford University in the US in 2011. However, it really caught momentum in 2012, debuting as a new way to share moments with friends.

The philosophy behind this app is to promote innocent, fun, and spontaneous communication with a certain lightness. The instructions read: Just snap a goofy picture or silly joke, send it, and have a quick laugh“ and the snap disappears shortly thereafter.

The sender of the snap can actually set the duration anything from 1 to 10 seconds after which the image will disappear, which seems to be part of Snapchat’s lure. Just snap and send a quick sext because, after all, it’™s going to be quickly deleted anyways, right?

WRONG!

The app has spread like wildfire among teens for this same reason, and it didn’t take long for it to become known as the “sexting” app. Parents have taken to online forums to share their distaste for the app, which seems to be finding its way onto their teenager’s phones without them knowing. Some believe there should be a “M” or “R” rating for Snapchat, while others say they just need to better educate their children on the dangers of sexting.

Oh, and if things like your partner receiving Snapchat updates (from other women) really frickin’ concern you, then Snapchat have really given you no comfort. Some time ago, it disabled users’ ability to view their friend’s best friends list, which means you have no idea who he/she is snapping… needless to say, cheating boyfriends and girlfriends everywhere rejoiced; paranoid significant others flipped.

Saying this, I know many people who use Snapchat simply as a fun way to communicate with friends, to show just how silly and goofy you can be, to share food pics, baby pics and family photos.

It is also being used as a marketing and branding tool. Snapchat recently added a new feature to their application called ‘Live Feed’ it enabled people to contribute pictures/videos to an event via their location. The Fifa World Cup in Brazil is a good example, they had a live feed called ‘Rio Live’ and it meant people at the event could share their pictures with every user of snapchat.

Also from a branding point of view, Snapchat can offer a different platform for businesses and celebrities to show their personalities and ultimately their brand. It seems the app is always evolving too, recently launching a ‘discover’ video feature which enables companies to distribute videos to Snapchat users.

So in some ways Snapchat is great, revolutionary perhaps…. in other ways, it’s downright sneaky.

What are your thoughts?