This year, Granite Bay High School has implemented one of the social media world’s various prevailing gadgets onto our campus: geofilters.

 Snapchat, the application from which this geotag phenomenon is derived from, is a renowned social media application with over 100 million active users every day.  

  18 percent of all United States social media users have Snapchat.

  In this application, users can communicate through pictures or videos with captions for word text.

   Geofilters, also known as geotags, were a new addition to one of Snapchat’s recent updates.

  “Anyone can make a Snapchat geotag. Snapchat has a great online interface where you can submit your designs,” said senior Luke Snedecor, who is the creator of Granite Bay High School’s newly famed  geotags.

   Now when a Snapchat user takes a photo at or near Granite Bay High School, the school’s customized geofilters appear.

 “During one of my digital arts classes at Sierra College, I created the two filters for GBHS.  They got approved about halfway through the summer,”  Snedecor said.

  These geofilters appear onto a Snapchat photo in correlation to a user’s specific location.

  For example, if one were to be snapchatting in Los Angeles, various Los Angeles geotag designs may appear onto the taken Snapchat photo.

  It’s all dependent on one’s location. Geofilters are used virtually all over the world.

 “I was just bouncing around on the internet and I came across how to make a Snapchat geotag,” said junior and student-technology director of Granite Bay Information Technology Brendan Bissell. “I knew my friend Luke was a great graphic designer so I sent him a text and said ‘Hey, we should have this for Granite Bay, and he ended up making a bunch of them.”

   Thanks to senior Luke Snedecor and Granite Bay’s GBiT class, the

   World-wide phenomenon was incorporated onto Granite Bay High’s campus.

  “I have had artwork approved anywhere between 2 days and 2 weeks,” Snedecor said.  “It takes another couple of days for the filter to appear in the region you set.”

 GBiT is a class students can enroll in to help support the technological needs of students and staff.

  Whether it’s a problem with a classroom computer or confusion with a device’s functions, GBiT is there to help.

  “I think the new geotags are really cool and I think a lot of people are using them,” said sophomore Kyle Jayousi who is apart of GBiT and helps manage faculty and business websites.

   Not only does GBHS have a few of their own personalized and permanent geofilters, but they also have created temporary ones correlating to school events.

   “Once people found out I was making these, they started asking me to make filters for them,” Snedecor said.

  For GBHS’s annual “Spirit Week,” Snedecor along with the help of GBiT , even created a custom Spirit Week design that could be activated on campus specifically during that week.

  “Student government asked me to make filters for Spirit Week, drama asked for one for their upcoming play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I’m even creating one for a local business.” said Snedecor.

  GBiT students also created a geotag that would transpire when students took a Snapchat at the annual bonfire held on campus on Oct. 22, 2015.

  “It’s kind of cool you can set (the geotag) so it only lasts for that event. Like for the bonfire, (we) made the geotag last for just (that night),” said Bissell.

  Other high schools in the area have also begun to take up this new social media addition onto their campus.

  “I think it really does show how technologically advanced our campus is,” said Bissell, “It’s pretty cool.”