I'm not sure what there is to "watch out for" with things like these. I've seen newsletters and emails that get sent home from grade schools and high schools telling parents to beware of this, that or the other thing that are just woefully outdated, inept, or flat out wrong. Parents should be informed about this stuff, and it helps to know it's out there, but the idea that it should or can simply be forbidden or prevented is naive.

Kids are almost always going to be more on the cutting edge with tech, and are going to find ways to get around any restrictions put in place. On the other hand, teaching and explaining to your kids how to use things like this, or why certain things might be a bad idea (regardless of platform) will never go out of style.

As a bit of humor, our family over the holidays decided that Brett Farve should be snapchat's spokesperson.

As you note, the kids know more about this stuff than we do, and the best defense is a good upbringing and lots of good discussions about it. Mostly, I wanted to flag this for parents who hadn't heard about it. It was certainly new to me.

... to think that that the photo/text is really going to be gone forever after 10 seconds. Data may be discarded, but once created its elements exists somewhere, unless overwritten. Also (and perhaps more importantly) today's smartphones make it simple to instantly do a "screenshot" of anything you see on your phone, and keeping said image in perpetuity.

What I meant was that the text/photo is not accessible via the app. As you point out, it's still out there in the interwebs somewhere. Excellent point about the screenshot as well.