If you are a little behind the eight ball, and are wondering what all the fuss is about with face swaps and puppy dog ears on pictures, it’s time you took a look at how everything works over on Snapchat.

The app now boasts a monster 310 million monthly users, although it is only now that the older folk are starting to take notice.

TIME have decided it’s time they take action, and have put together an adult’s (read idiot’s) guide to demystifying the whole shebang.

It’s extensive, so we’ll get the ball rolling on each section and you can do the rest.

Navigating the App

When opening Snapchat, forget the infinite scroll of the social networks you’re used to, because this app immediately springboards the camera to the screen. The philosophy behind this unconventional landing place is that chats all begin with the conversation, and in Snapchat, images do the talking.

That makes even more sense when you think of how the app treats its photos and videos ephemerally. Just as spoken words only hang in the air long enough for ears to hear them, these images last just long enough to be seen (or more accurately, for 24 hours) and then they disappear.

 Mastering the Camera

Snapchat’s camera filters are the app’s secret weapon. Hidden from plain view, you have to know how to access them to use them. Take an image, then swipe left or right while on the camera screen and you’ll see a filter slide over across it. These filters aren’t obvious, but they’re a great way to give life to your boring adult snaps. There are even some cool geo-located filters based on where you are, whether it’s in a city or at an event. (Custom-made geo-filters for festivities like weddings are all the rage these days.)

 Chatting Like a Teen

Chatting via the app is all about talking with pictures. Not like hieroglyphics or their modern day equivalent, emojis, but actual photos and videos. On the chat screen, you’ll see your contacts’ names with a while bunch of shapes next to them. There’s a speech bubble, which means the latest message was a standard text-based chat. The triangles mean that you sent the last item, and the squares show that your friend was the last person to send you a snap.

Tweaking Your Preferences

Swiping down from the camera screen reveals your account preference screen, a mashup of contacts and personal settings that helps to refine your Snapchat experience.

The big yellow ghost icon at the center of the screen is your snap code. Tap on it, and it will morph into a camera so you can transpose your mug into the middle of it, if you please. The dots around the edge work like a QR code. Just point Snapchat’s camera at another users’ snap code, touch the screen, and it will brings up their account so you can quickly add them to your friend list.

Watching Stories

From the camera screen, swiping to the left reveals the Stories panel. If you think about this page as “catching up on my stories,” like you’d say before settling in for a night of Murder She Wrote, then you’re in the right mindset.

Snaps are just individual photos or videos. But when strung together, one photo and movie after another, they become stories—chronological accounts of a day.

There are three sections to the Stories screen: Discover, Live, and All Stories.

Like I said, if anything isn’t clear you might want to read that TIME piece in full HERE.

It ends with the following summation:

Like a magazine, Snapchat is a customized collection of stories pulled together every day for every user. Seems straightforward, right? Thank goodness I didn’t have to describe a magazine to young people.

A magazine – those things you see stacked next to the toilet whilst you play with your phone.

So why are millenials going so mad for Snapchat then? Here’s a pretty good summation from one user talking to BusinessInsider:

“Snapchat is the ultimate social media tool — users want to share their lives to anyone they choose to elicit possible feedback, but without the necessity of it being stored. Facebook allows you to upload images, but who wants to see 30 images and a few videos of a concert or you playing with your dog? And further, who wants to save or even hold on to that (including you)? Snapchat provides an easier answer to Facebook’s ‘What are you doing right now?’ I use it personally to stay in touch with friends and show people what I’m doing, but I’ve used it for just about everything”.

Hey, if it means less baby and dog pictures on Facebook then please, for the love of all that is good in this world, sign up right now and get stuck in.

 [sources:time&businessinsider]