Snapchat, the popular youth-oriented app is the latest to join a wave of social media platforms setting out to monitor and improve the well-being of their users.
It has announced a new feature called “Here for You” that promises to provide proactive in-app support to Snapchatters who may be experiencing mental health or emotional crisis.
This new feature will direct users who may be experiencing mental health or emotional crisis to curated resources and content.
Now, if you type a word that’s related to mental health, such as “anxiety” or “bullying,” into the app’s search bar, original content from what the company calls “local experts” will appear.
For example, someone who searched “anxiety” in Snapchat would be directed to “Chill Pill,” a new in-house-produced series featuring short anxiety-reducing videos. Other searchable topics will include “depression, stress, grief, suicidal thoughts, and eating disorders.”
The content on “Here for You” is going to be styled in the exact same way as any other programming on Snapchat. The media will appear in brief, 10-second clips, and users can tap through to learn more.
Does It Really Work?
It is currently unsure if it works, Snapchat released a beta version that will connect users to mental health resources.
To gauge how effective it is depends on whether users actually click on the resources, and whether the resources are credible and lead people to seek out the desired treatments offered, such as getting over the phone therapy, which has proven to be one of most effective means of dealing with mental health issues like depression and anxiety, according to this article.
Snapchat has declined to share any data on how often users were searching topics related to mental health, except for the company-conducted user research that found its users commonly experience feelings of stress, depression, and anxiety.
Therefore, we don’t have enough information right now regarding user experience to know how effective Snapchat’s interventions have been, but with time we will be able to tell if the effect will be positive or not.
How Have Other Social Media Platforms Approached the Issue?
On Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram, users can block or report material, and Facebook also provides resources for users to engage directly with other users about their posts. These platforms, along with Pinterest, also deploy artificial intelligence to identify and ban content that may be viewed as harmful.
Facebook and Pinterest have also introduced proactive measures, such as; attempting to provide resources to users they view as being at risk for mental health concerns.
Perhaps prompted by a number of suicides broadcast via the platform, Facebook has launched a suicide prevention initiative, which uses AI capabilities to flag users who may be at risk of self-harm or suicide. Pinterest prompts users to undertake mood-altering in-app activities based on their searches.
Social media companies like Snapchat, Instagram, and Pinterest may be rushing to offer mental health support to respond to public fears. Offering solutions like Snapchat’s “Here For You” suggests the company is rejecting the deficit hypothesis—that time on social may impact mental health. They could be right. They could also be wrong, and the lack of supporting evidence for their decisions to roll out these features should raise a red flag. We should expect them to soon share more with the public and researchers and professionals working in the medical community.
We still don’t know much about what kind of interventions are more effective than others, and for whom. We know that simplistic solutions, such as putting warning labels on digitally manipulated images or temporarily banning users who post offensive content, have not been found to be effective.
