Written by Julie Jernigan, Staff Writer

Recently, Facebook quietly released a stand-alone app for teens only, specifically high schoolers.

The app, Lifestage, was designed by Michael Sayman, a 19-year-old employee of Facebook, who immediately left high school to work for the social media empire.

Similar to Snapchat as I have come to find, the app, which is free, opens to a camera where users can document every day aspects with “fields.” Users pick fields, much like filters, such as dislikes, school, home, music, etc. to share amongst their friends.

The big difference between the two apps is that users must choose the high school they attend, and can only view content from their school. Users are also not allowed to direct message someone, according to a post by Sayman himself. This separates it from its competitors, but deters users as it limits its capabilities.

Sayman said in his post, “Lifestage allows people to build a profile made up entirely of ‘video fields.’ It allows them to show who they are and to find out more about the people in their school community as well as meet new people.”

Lifestage is a little confusing to work as there is no instructions when logging into the app, and as it is new no one had logged on from my old high school when I tested it. It promptly asks though if I wanted to share with my friends on Facebook.

The reviews are less than stellar as they only received a two-star rating on Apple’s App store. One user wrote, “This app is plain boring and unnecessary,” and another wrote, “Fun concept, but way overused, not new, tired of it, cliché, etc….”

Sayman did say in his post that his team is looking into expanding the concept to colleges.

Maybe with a little more work, listening to reviews, and coming up with more ways to separate it from Snapchat will Lifestage become an equal partner to its successor.