‘Pictures are being used for talking,’ says social app’s boss, as he tries to help people understand why children are taking ‘a zillion photos’

What is Snapchat? A question asked by a growing number of parents over the past couple of years, as they noticed their children flocking to the social app. Now its chief executive Evan Spiegel has provided an answer.

In a surprisingly-grainy video uploaded to Snapchat’s YouTube channel, Spiegel attempts to answer the question “what is Snapchat” with the aid of some old-school pen’n’paper diagrams.

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“This is important as it relates to identity, because really that’s one of the things that’s at the core of social media. Accumulation was really about this idea that identity is everything I’ve ever done, so you have all the pictures of everything you’ve ever done, and that’s who you are as a person.

“But instant expression changed that, because instant expression says my identity is who I am right now. It says I’m the result of everything I’ve ever done, but I’m not really the accumulation of all that stuff.”