It might be hard to comprehend, but we did once live in a time where breaking up with someone was not a public affair. Dissolving relationships used be private matters and didn't consist of selecting a new item in a drop-down menu.

Those in Generation Y and older can recount those times (10 years ago, to be exact). The younger crowd doesn't seem to know that life. From getting braces to what they ate for breakfast — they shout everything from the Internet rooftops.

The line between public and private matters appears to be convoluted. Is that a good thing?

According to a May 2013 Pew Research Study, a handful of statistics reveal that as the coming generations enter their teens, sharing is definitely caring — and commonplace. Their Internet bios run the gamut: 91 percent post a photo of themselves, 71 percent post their school name, 71 percent post the city or town where they live, 53 percent post their email address, and 20 percent post their cellphone number.

Older generations would ring the stranger-danger alarm, and they have an entirely different view on the issue.

To their credit, this younger crowd was born in front of computer screen. When Facebook debuted, this group was in elementary school. A handful were even introduced to the world via social media, thanks to their parents' perpetual baby picture postings. Exercising Internet sequestration was never even a choice — they were thrust into the news feed without consent.

Whether a product of their own environment or not, younger generations have a skewed view of what privacy actually is. Some may argue they will never know what it means, based on their social media profiles alone. The latest craze and popularity in "privacy apps," i.e. SnapChat and Cyber Dust, aims to refute that claim — but is that an empty promise?

SnapChat is most popular with those college-aged and under, and it operates by allowing you to send "snaps" (videos or images) viewable for only an allotted amount of time (in seconds) to your selected friends list.

This 2-year-old app claims to store the material on their servers temporarily and does not store on the mobile device of the receiver. Teens feel that rather than sharing content permanently via the "Big Three" — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram — they at least have some control of who receives a snap.

Sarah Benoist, senior at the University of Texas, claims SnapChat is the only way to go these days. She says she and her sorority sisters send hundreds of snaps per week.

"Facebook is definitely old news," Benoist said. "If I want to share with my friends, the majority of it goes directly through SnapChat. I know the people accessing it, and feel like it's a smarter way to share my weekend adventures."

Cyber Dust operates along the same sort of lines. This Mark Cuban production allows for disappearing messages as well, but in text form specifically. The idea behind the startup was inspired by Cuban's own legal woes.

"For me, it was watching the SEC taking every digital message I gave them and apply whatever context it wanted to apply. No matter what the truth was," Cuban said in a Forbes interview. "Then I saw the success of SnapChat and realized that I wasn't the only one who had a need to reduce my digital footprint."

While teens, and apparently entrepreneurs, seem to believe all is gravy on the outside, should they be so quick to assume? Anyone following the recent revelations in the SnapChat storyline would argue that the creators might be harboring a false sense of reality.

In what appears to be teenage playground, hackers have actually had the most fun. For example, SnapChat began 2014 with 4.6 million of its users having their usernames and partial phone numbers made available for download. There was even an app released called SnapHack, which evades Snapchat's protection and allows people to share images — images that claimed to be unshareable.

But the latest SnapChat news proves to be the most concerning.

In February, the Los Angeles Times reported that Spanish-based cybersecurity consultant Jaime Sanchez found a glitch in SnapChat's system that allows hackers to send thousands of messages to individual users in a matter of seconds. Inundating one user with so many messages can clog their account to the point that the Snapchat app causes the entire device to freeze and ultimately crash, or require that the user to reset.

How's that for a little content control? SnapChat has yet to comment.

As evidence suggests, the self-destructing image app might be destructing more than just your message. Frat-boy videos might be short-lived, but it appears the hidden consequences are not. The illusion that your digital footprint might be decreasing appears to be negated by the possible compromise of your personal information.

Currently, SnapChat boasts more than 100 million users who share more than 400 million snaps daily. The numbers hint that the hankering for a more "private" forum is there. However, the idea of privacy — not the message — appears to be what's ephemeral.