I saw a GMA piece about "Snapchat." My preteen and teenage children, and their cousins were talking about it. Has anyone had any experience with it? Will the phone monitoring software detect it, and copy the photo before it disappears from the phone? I don't want to ask too many questions for fear of arousing suspicion. Thanks.

My daughters and I send silly photos of ourselves to each other (which is ostensibly its purpose...), and I do it because they find it amusing and my oldest asked me to download it. But I truly don't GET it, and my real thought is that it would make a fine sexting tool for those into that kind of thing. Definitely an affair-enabler. I do not know if monitoring software would pick it up, but if not it would be very difficult to police.

The photos do not save to the phone; to do a screenshot you would have to be the recipient and prepared to do it in the 3 seconds (or however long) the picture is on screen. If the recipient views the photo for only 1 second, the clock continues to countdown and the photo disappears.

You can save pictures you take with the camera like always, but once they're sent they're designed to be viewed and ** poof **. You can draw things on the pictures or do short bits of text; I think the maximum viewing time is 12 seconds, but 2-4 seems much more common ("mother, that picture was NOT worth 5 seconds...").

I am unfamiliar with the time frames for the new video feature. I haven't upgraded and again, don't find much redeeming value in the app.