Snapchat is ‘Here For You’ with New Mental Health Feature

As technology and social media broaden and expands among people, it is no exception for teenagers. The social media and the activities that they do it on there are the things that they mostly care about and consider important. As much as they use social media, some of the teenagers use this medium for cyberbullying. According to the statistics from i-SAFE foundation, over half of the teenagers reported that they’re bullied online. However, they reported that they don’t tell this to their parents. In order to prevent this situation, one of the representatives of teenage social media, Snapchat is taking a step to help these teenagers with an anti-bullying campaign called ‘Here For You’. This Snapchat’s new tool ’Here For You’ connects users with mental health experts when users search for sensitive topics such as anxiety, depression, suicide and bullying, self-help information. Collaborating with the experts, they will help them to get through what they’re going through as well as providing an advice from local experts if necessary. This would help those who struggle with mental health issues.

I think the idea of the anti-bullying campaign has a very good purpose. Because we are living in a society where social media and technologies are everywhere, it is inevitable for us not to use these media; it’s even getting difficult for teenagers. I also think the attempt to prevent cyberbullying among teenagers is very necessary. I think it is better to try something than not trying anything. I hope this technology works out well that teenagers who are facing these problems would get help if needed.

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2020/02/13/snapchat-here-you-new-mental-health-tool/4747438002/

4 thoughts on “Snapchat is ‘Here For You’ with New Mental Health Feature

  1. I think Snapchat is doing a great thing, with this new feature. Snapchat is a big part of the younger generations life & I think that this company making efforts against bullying is huge. So many young people are being abused and hurt through social media & we have to do everything we can to help them, and to stop those who are in the wrong.

  2. Cyberbullying will sadly always be problematic, and I’m happy Snapchat is taking a turn in the right direction against this, the more awareness this issue gets, the more methods to prevent people from getting affected by it increases, it’s a very touchy subject and isn’t brought to light too often and how it can mentally affect you so much despite it being online, I consider it a very serious issue.

    One thing I never liked was how the report system is very inconsistent and not reliable, if someone is constantly bothering you and you block them but they make multiple accounts to continue to harass you, they should be device banned, or something similar.

  3. I think this is a smart move for Snapchat. Mental health is a very big problem in our society and teenagers are one of the groups that are struggling. A lot of teenagers do not want to tell their parents about their depression, so at least they can get some help from the media they used. One thing to make sure is that the experts that Snapchat is hiring need to very careful that they cannot deliver any misleading messages. Snapchat will be in big trouble is someone listens to their experts and results in a worse situation. Overall, I really like this social entrepreneurial idea.

  4. I am happy that SnapChat is starting to take steps to help with cyberbullying on their platform. I feel the issue is a lot of times social media platforms do not want to get involved so nothing is really accomplished when reports are made. These platforms have to capabilities to further investigate and should! Once the investigation is complete they should ban users from their platform. User’s mental health is way more important than the amount of users using the app. At this point everyone has SnapChat so banning specific users would not hurt them. I believe to register with this app you have to put in a phone number, so the bully would not be able to return under the same number. Cyberbullying is huge and no matter how many school presentations there are, it will not permanently stop. It is great that SnapChat has implemented a program to help users feel safer. Social media is only going to grow so it is crucial platforms now start to set the foundation for more to come in terms of bullying.

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