Tolkkinen: The Boundary Waters dilemma: What to do with your magnificent SnapChat streak?

Now that her husband and 16-year-old son are on their way to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Kate Scherfenberg can relax.

The mad rush of last-minute tasks is over, leaving the Otter Tail County mom one teeny-tiny little task.

Every day, she needs to log into her son’s Snapchat account to keep his 746-day-plus streak going during their five-day trip. In the Boundary Waters, he won’t be able to access the internet, but like many wilderness adventurers, he has figured out a way around that.

He has instructed his mom to send daily photos to whoever is at the top of his Snapchat list, and she has agreed. That means, since she is one of those at the top, that she will have to send one to herself.

“I don’t even think my son’s all that into it,” she said. “But he does like his streaks.”

He’s not the only one. A wide range of social media apps have figured out how to keep us coming back again and again by reminding us how many days we have used it. Duolingo, Wordle, Snapchat, and BeReal, for starters. Many of them take up just a few moments of our day, but over time, they can build into a thing of splendor, a Taj Mahal of habit, a streak of two years, three years or more of doing the same simple thing.

It can feel crushing to lose all that even for something as magnificent as canoeing through the clear lakes and rivers of the Boundary Waters’ 1.1 million acres, of breathing in that fresh air, of watching for moose tracks and bear scat.

One guide said his girlfriend maintains his streak when he’s out in the wilderness. Another said at least one Scout on each of his trips has asked someone back home to do the same. On yet another outing, every single Scout had paid a Scout’s sister to keep all their streaks going.

O’Neill said he doesn’t get it, but at least if they find someone at home to tend to their streaks, they don’t have to worry about it when they’re paddling or camping.

Sort of like ... having a pet.

“We like to tell the Scouts, yeah, there’s no Wi-Fi connection in the woods, but your connection with nature is more important than that,” he said. “So enjoy the experience. Enjoy the wilderness.”

Marguerite Ohrtman, who researches the effects of social media at the University of Minnesota, said that even adults who study the phenomenon are not immune to the lure of social media streaks. One of her graduate students, midconversation, broke away to upload a photo to BeReal, explaining that if she didn’t, the app would lock her out for 24 hours.

Isn’t that interesting? Not to belabor the pet analogy, but it’s sort of like being on a leash. Do this. At this time. Or there will be consequences. Scherfenberg, who teaches high school Chinese, said she has had a whole class of students suddenly stop what they were doing to submit BeReal photos.

Ohrtman said streaks work because they deliver tiny bits of dopamine. Little sparks of approval, the feeling of small wins that might be trivial but feel so crucial. Losing anything, even something that has no intrinsic value like an app streak, feels like a real loss.

If only there were a way to get pats on the back for real accomplishments. One hundred days of flossing after you brush. Six months of washing the dishes every night after dinner. Two years of making your bed every morning. Or six years in a row of visiting a state park.

I choose not to endure the pain of losing a magnificent streak. If I miss a day or three of Wordle, so be it. Still, Duolingo has been getting under my skin, not just reminding me to keep plugging away, but pitting me against other learners so that we either climb up in our league or fall back to a lower, lesser league.

My 12-year-old son is now on an anti-streak. A hundred days of not learning German on Duolingo and counting.