Photo Messages Could Make Texting Disappear

When 16-year-old marly king, a high schooler in Birmingham, Ala., wanted to tell friends how excited she was about her brother’s return from college, she could have sent a text. Two years ago, she definitely would have.

But now, she says, she doesn’t “have a need” for that; she uses photo-messaging instead. “It’s a more interactive way of communicating,” says King, who sends 50 to 100 photos each day–including, at one point, a selfie with her sibling to alert friends about her brother’s return–using Snapchat, the app that lets users exchange images (either plain or with virtual scribbles) that disappear after a few seconds. Says Hannah LeComte, a 15-year-old from Tuscaloosa, Ala.: “It’s easier to send someone a picture of how you’re feeling than to put it into words.”

This may well be the future of mobile communication–and not just among tech-savvy teens. As a whole, people are texting less than they used to: the average U.S. cell-phone user now sends 628 text messages per quarter, down 8% from a year ago, according to Chetan Sharma Consulting, a telecommunications research firm. Meanwhile, snapping photos has become the most widely used function of mobile phones, and a slew of new services–including Snapchat, the just-launched Instagram Direct and lesser-known apps like Kik and Wickr–are making person-to-person picture-messaging more accessible than ever.

Although the most voracious photo-messagers are teens and, to a lesser extent, 20-somethings, the benefits of image-based communication are universal. Texting the phrase I’m bored, for example, necessitates a follow-up: Why are you bored? Where are you bored? How bored are you? But scribbling that same message across a photo of your empty workstation offers instant context: I’m bored because I’m at work and there’s nothing to do. “This is about layered communication, the ability to have multimedia human exchanges in ways that we weren’t able to do before,” says Scott Campbell, a professor of telecommunications at the University of Michigan.

The conceit is clearly resonating. Snapchatters send 350 million photos and videos each day, up 600% from last year. And that’s all in addition to the billions of photos sent via wireless carriers and native mobile-messaging clients like iMessage. “It’s not just that kids are too tired of typing,” says Sandra Cortesi, the director of the Youth and Media Project at Harvard University. “Sometimes an image can be more personal and intimate. As those tools and devices become more ubiquitous, photo-messaging is going to become more popular.”

If this narrative sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Both texting and social networking started as youth fads but were eventually harnessed by companies and people of all ages to streamline virtual communication.

To that end, Facebook, which owns Instagram, has spent the past year trying to build a photo-messaging app with mass appeal. After its Snapchat clone, Poke, failed to resonate in 2012, it reportedly tried to buy the real thing for $3 billion in November, but Snapchat refused. Instagram Direct, which allows users to send one another private photos, is Facebook’s latest play for dominance. “It’s worried about people creating a network outside of the social network they’re already participating in,” says Rick Summer, an analyst at Morningstar. Twitter has also tweaked its interface to allow users to direct-message photos.

Of course, myriad issues remain. For one, as many teens note, it’s tough to photo-message about serious subjects–the whole practice, as it is now, lends itself much better to casual conversation. The bigger challenge, however, is a business one: Can this stuff be monetized? Despite receiving $50 million in new funding, Snapchat generates no revenue (though it has floated the idea of “exploding coupons” that last a few seconds). Line, a popular chat app in Japan, generates some–it sells emojis and virtual stickers for messages. But it’s clearly a work in progress.

Nonetheless, analysts agree: even if an individual app flames out, photo-messaging will endure. “The motivations are there to share yourself in a symbolic way, in an economical way, in a more in-the-moment way,” says Campbell. Or as LeComte, the 15-year-old Snapchatter, puts it, “It’s not, like, lazy. But it’s easier.”