It’s the app that’s on every high schooler’s phone: Snapchat. First released late in 2011, has taken the world by storm. Available on iOS and Android, it’s an app you’ll find on nearly every home screen. Since its start, Snapchat has done nothing but grow. Starting as a simple self-destructing picture app, later adding the popular ‘Stories,’ Snapchat boasts over 700 million photos and videos sent every day. After Facebook tried to buy it for $4 billion in 2013, the app is now valued between $10 and $20 billion today. Needless to say, it’s a force to be reckoned with.

For some, it’s part of their life. They open their phone, check snapchat. I’m one of them. I can’t stop looking at people’s stories where they post things that they’re doing, that their friends are doing, or what the nearest chair looks like. There’s some kind of draw to these kinds of things, the instant gratification you get that just isn’t there when you’re simply texting someone.

The newly added discover feature, where you can look at content from sources like ESPN, CNN, and National Geographic, give users another reason to do nothing but stay in the app. It’s a cultural phenomenon that simply can’t be stopped, and doesn’t look to be slowing anytime soon. It’s something that everyone looks at, and with such an impressively massive user base, it’s something that just can’t be ignored.

It’s slowly seeping into everyone’s phones, routines, and lives. Before we know it we will need our phones for only one app: Snapchat. The necessity of poorly-taken selfies will soon become the only reason for waking up in the morning. Snapchat will control our currencies, the banks, the governments of the world. We will become one with the Snapchat, and the Snapchat will become one with us. Then, finally, under one unified flag of a white ghost silhouette on a yellow background, world peace will finally be declared. Thanks, Snapchat.