Snapchat is one of the most popular apps on the market. Especially for teens. On average there are about 158 users a day. Seven out of ten of those users are Millennials.

Recently the Salem-Keizer school district restricted Snapchat from being accessed using the school WiFi.

“I used Snapchat all the time before. It’s how I communicate with people,” Angelica Steele ‘19 said. “Now that the school WiFi doesn’t support it I don’t use it as much. I can’t, it uses all my data.”

“We were starting to experience issues with our internet connection maxing out regularly during the day causing slow downs and limiting access to educational resources and applications,” Jay Remy, the director of Community Relations and Communications in the Salem Keizer school district said. “Snapchat was accounting for nearly 35% of the bandwidth usage, and blocked it as a measure to mitigate the issue. While we try to maintain an open access network, we may need to take actions like this from time to time to ensure a stable network for our core educational purposes.”

The district tries to keep the WiFi as open as possible but they cannot justify using all the resources that Snapchat requires. If other programs begin causing problems like this they will be restricted as well, so it’s not just limited to Snapchat.

Students are still able to access Snapchat in schools using their personal data and some have found apps that get past the restriction.