I know people who are obsessed with maintaining streaks on Snapchat, but I see the effects of a streak as different from the effects of the likes and shares mentioned above. While both mechanisms encourage users to use their platform more, keeping a Snapchat streak with friends puts an emphasis on actually communicating with individual people instead of blasting content across the platform.

Whether or not that communication between individuals is high-quality will vary from person to person, though.

A streak is a 1-5 minute thing at most for those who are obsessed with it. Many people in that category send out a single "streak" snap to everyone they have a streak with. You can't spend the same 20 minutes of Instagram scrolling with streaks. I don't think it's a completely harmless thing, but it's not in the same category at all.