The tradition of the Easter egg hunt is a major event in the United States. Easter is the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead that people first began to observe as a holiday in 30 A.D., and there are both religious and secular ways of celebrating this event. This year, Easter is on the 21st of April and many churches will hold various Easter services. There will be parades filled with festivities and people with bonnets and kids with baskets. However, over the years, the Easter tradition has changed.

When the Easter tradition first came to be, it had a significant religious significance—and it still does. This holiday has shifted from it’s religious gravity to become more and more popular in secular culture. The 21st generation celebrates this pagan holiday in, what some may say, an “easier” way.

The prevalent social media platform, Snapchat, knew exactly what to do to alter one of the most popular traditions of our childhood. #Snapchategghunt became the Easter sensation! If we look at it from Snapchat’s perspective, it definitely gives those involved a hardy workout. To those who are not familiar with the topic, the hunt is just like the game Pokemon Go, where people are virtually collecting things. In this case, it’s eggs. Why go collecting Easter eggs outside in the grass when you can go on the Snapchat app and collect eggs the “cool” way?

Though it’s not clear what motivated Snapchat to create this type of game, it might have been related to an attempt to garner more Snapchat users, especially after scandals that arose in 2018.

Since much of modern culture has become very tech-oriented, it seems like a smart move to make the traditional egg hunt into something tech-related and easy too. While the Snapchat egg hunt gets people up and moving, it also keeps people glued to their phones even more so than they already might be. Even though the app is offering “any weather” egg-hunting and other fun tricks, the idea of a virtual egg hunt is what some are calling a detachment from the Easter spirit . Despite all the controversy, you can still use this Easter as an opportunity to revisit old traditional ideas or to maybe try out the Snapchat Easter egg hunt and build new traditions after all.