Snapchat is one of the most popular social media platforms, particularly for younger users aged 13-24. In addition to many fun features, Snapchat is unique from other major social networks with its user scoring system.
The Snapchat Score
You can find your Snapchat score under your name on your profile page. Snapchat's website cryptically states that your score is "determined by a super secret special equation."
How Is Your Score Determined?
While no one knows for sure what the exact algorithm Snapchat uses is, it does appear that the score is increased by at least one point or more by any of these three actions:
- The number of snaps you send.
- The number of snaps you view.
- The number of stories you send.
Snapchat scores do not increase for stories that you view, or texts that you send, or for anything else that does not involve snaps or stories.
Increasing Your Score
The best way to increase your Snapchat score is to increase the number of snaps and stories you send as well as get your friends to send you more snaps to open. Some other ways that you can increase your score are:
- Log out of the Snapchat for a few days and then log back in and check your score. Snapchat will increase your score by several points to reward you for coming back to the platform.
- Focus on sending out more snaps rather than sending snaps to more people. You are rewarded for the number of snaps sent instead of the number of people receiving them.
- Sending snaps out to celebrities is a well-known way of increasing your score because you can increase the number of snaps that you send out without overloading your friends with them.
- Avoid websites that tell you that entering your username can increase your score. Using these sites may lead to excessive spam and do nothing to increase your Snapchat score.
The Benefit of a High Score
At this time the only benefit to a Snapchat score is to help you to earn trophies. You can earn trophies for reaching different score levels, starting with the baby for earning 10 and topping out with the ghost trophy for a score of 500,000.
Having a high score can also convey a sense of "authority" among frequent Snapchat users and peg you as someone likely to be influential with others on the platform. At the very least, you get "bragging rights" among your other Snapchat-using friends for having the highest score among them and the most trophies!
Your Friend's Scores
If you want to see the scores of your friends, just go to the My Friends link in your Snapchat menu. Click on a person's name and the score will appear to the right of their username. You can only view the scores of people who have followed you, so if you see a friend's username and the score does not appear, that means they have either not followed you or they have blocked you.
Hiding Your Score
There is no way to hide your score from your followers on Snapchat. You can "hide" it by unfollowing or blocking specific people or by changing your privacy settings. If you change your settings to allow anyone to send a private snap to you, this will allow people you are not connected to on Snapchat to send you snaps without being able to see your score. Allowing anyone at all to send you snaps though may not be a desirable setting so use it at your own discretion.
Understanding Snapchat Scores
While your Snapchat score doesn't appear, at least at present, to give you any benefits for your Snapchat account, it's still fun to find ways to increase your score. The more you use the social networking app to send snaps and stories, the higher your score will go.
