[quote]By Nikki Roberts
Online Writer
Graphic by Drew Danko[/quote]

If you happen to take a Snapchat selfie around Metea Valley, there’s many options to add to your photo. You can zap the color out of your picture by displaying it in black and white, add the current time or temperature, or use the newest addition: a Metea Mustang geofilter.

This past summer, a Metea Valley and Stampede alumnus, Ryan Cotter, designed and submitted the Mustang logo after other area high schools had published their own unique filters. “There is no way to know if yours is going to be approved, so I was a little surprised.” Cotter said. The Mustang logo made its debut late this summer, much to the surprise and excitement of many students. Being the first out of all three Valley schools to have its own filter, the Mustang logo is a great example of how Snapchat geofilters can be fun, spirited extras to add to your photos.

When Snapchat first gave artists the opportunity to submit geofilters to the public, the filters would pop up on pictures when you approached a large city, a popular tourist destination, or would appear on important holidays.

But quite recently, less significant towns, such as Naperville and Aurora, have not one, but two or three geofilters a piece. Pull up to the McDonald’s drive-thru, and you’ll be able to scroll through three options to decorate a picture of your meal. If you’re anywhere near a mall, you could use Snapchat’s not-so-convenient shopping list graphic. Quite recently, Snapchat has created filters which are used as advertisements for commercial events or popular movies, such as “Minions”.

 Just sitting in my bedroom, I can receive five different geofilters from various towns, three of which aren’t even from the city in which I live. Even residents of certain neighborhoods, such as Concord Valley, can display a filter that allows everyone they have added on Snapchat to know where they are. To be quite frank, I don’t care to know if you’re hanging around your house in Concord Valley.

Once rare and exciting additives to pictures, excessive geofilters have become annoying nuisances that I wish I could eliminate from my account. It may be fun to occasionally decorate your Snapchat shots with a colorful design or school emblem, but when every other picture I receive wears an advertisement of some sort, I feel the tempting urge to never open the Snapchat app again. There is plenty of media overload being aimed at people of all ages, whether it be via television, newspapers, or various forms of social media; the last place it needs to be is on our personal photos. Let’s keep the pictures from our high school years as keepsakes, not as memories of the increasing prominence advertising holds in our lives.