Snap Inc. (NYSE:SNAP) today announced a series of new features designed to educate and empower members of the Snapchat community to support friends who might be struggling with their own social and emotional wellbeing. This effort includes a new partnership with Headspace, a global leader in meditation and mindfulness on new tools, and premium content.
These features were informed by research conducted late last year into how Snapchatters and their friends experience mental health. We found that an overwhelming majority of Snapchatters experience feelings of stress and anxiety and that their friends are the first people they turn to when they need help, more than professionals or even their parents. They also see their friends as the most positive force in their lives — consistent with other studies that have shown that spending time with friends can be one of the most effective ways to combat feelings of loneliness and depression.
As the platform that reaches 90% of 13-34 year olds, and connects them with their close friends, Snapchat can play an important role in helping our community access preventative wellbeing tools, and resources when they or their friends are experiencing a mental health crisis.
Headspace Mini
As part of a new developer product, Snap Minis, that allows developers to bring bite sized utilities into Snapchat, Headspace and Snap are partnering on a new Headspace Mini that will give Snapchatters access to guided meditations and mindfulness practices, directly in our app.
Minis are designed to deeply integrate within conversations on Snapchat, so coordinating between friends is faster than ever. Through the Headspace Mini, Snapchatters will be able to do exercises with friends, or use new tools to send encouraging messages to positively boost friends in need. The Mini will roll out to Snapchatters in the coming weeks.
New Snap Originals
Our platform content, Discover, features Snap Originals — premium mobile Shows made exclusively for Snapchat’s audience.
New premium Snapchat Original Shows on our Discover platform to help demystify mental health. Later this year, “Coach Kev” produced by Laugh Out Loud will premiere, in which comedian and producer Kevin Hart, inspired by his own experiences, becomes the go-to coach, sharing positivity and wisdom, for anyone aspiring to live their best life. Earlier this year, we aired a documentary series, “Mind Yourself,” that offered an honest look at teens’ mental health journeys and was watched by 12 million Snapchatters
New Tools to Support Snapchatters
Our in-app reporting tools allow Snapchatters to alert us when they worry their friends are at risk for self-harm, and we notify that friend of the help available to them. We’re now significantly improving that experience, by immediately showing those Snapchatters how they can get connected with emergency services, message a trained counselor through Crisis Text Line, or talk live with someone at the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.
Friends Check Up
Privacy and safety are critical to helping our community feel comfortable expressing themselves freely, with their close friends. Snapchat is not designed to facilitate easy messaging from strangers — by default, you cannot receive a message from someone you have not accepted as a friend.
With our community using Snapchat more than ever to stay connected to their friends and loved ones, we want to do our part to help remind and inform them about safety on Snapchat. We just launched a new safety notification that prompts Snapchatters to review their list of friends and make sure they only are friends with people they know and trust in real life.
Here For You
Our research also informed the development of a feature we rolled out earlier than planned to help support our community during the onset of COVID-19. Here For You provides Snapchatters with expert resources when they search for topics related to their emotional and physical wellbeing, including stress related to COVID-19, anxiety, depression, domestic violence, bullying and more.
As we launch these new features, content, and partnerships, we want to make it as easy as possible for Snapchatters to access them. We are creating a new Here For You Center in Snapchatters’ profiles that will be a hub for all of these different resources — and where we will continue to add new initiatives over time.
About Snap Inc.
Snap Inc. is a camera company. We believe that reinventing the camera represents our greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate. We contribute to human progress by empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together. For more information, visit snap.com.
About Headspace
Headspace was created with one mission in mind: to improve the health and happiness of the world. Reaching more than 65 million users in 190 countries, Headspace was one of the first meditation apps in the world and remains a leader in mindfulness and mental training. Headspace is committed to advancing the field of mindfulness through clinically validated research, with one of the largest research pipelines of any digital health and wellness company. Headspace operates a B2B business (Headspace for Work) to offer its mindfulness products and services to more than 900 companies, such as Starbucks, Adobe, GE, Hyatt and Unilever, to help them build healthier, more productive cultures and higher performing organizations. Headspace supports government entities like New York State and the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) to offer digital mental health tools. Headspace partners with many of the world’s most-recognizable brands, including Apple and Amazon, as well as with Nike, NBA and the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team to offer sport and movement content. Headspace Health is Headspace’s digital health subsidiary pioneering new ways to incorporate the Headspace mindfulness experience into digital medicine. Headspace has been recognized by Fast Company as one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies, Apple’s Best of 2018, Samsung’s Best of 2019 and one of CB Insights’ top digital health companies, along with being selected for five Webby Awards in health and fitness between 2018 and 2019. For more information please visit us at www.headspace.com, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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