Her name is Shayla. She was a teen singer with my indie record label (that I own) for disadvantaged kids. While at Georgia Tech’s (ATDC) trying to build a music app to help promote the kids music Shayla says, “‘Rob, this is stupid – our music just isn’t that good. We need to fix social media instead. It is super toxic and always makes me feel like I am never good enough.” All the other kids cheer!
Shayla had been abandoned by her mom three times and we meet her at a talent show where she lived; a group home for troubled teens. When she sang it brought tears to your eyes.
That was a few years ago. Now we are working with the National Science Foundation through their iCAP program at George Washington University in DC. Our vision is to build a non-toxic social platform where users can let the inside of them match the outside on them on the platform hoping to reduce rampant anxiety in teens worldwide before it manifests into an even bigger problem.
We interviewed 150 teens worldwide (living the problem daily) and discovered that most of our initial hypothesis’s were wrong. We found that most teens on bad days stay to themselves scrolling through posts on social media heightening their anxiety. They say they are not ready to talk to friends yet desperately yearn for much needed emotional support. We believe we have solved this problem with a feature we call, CareHearts. You can download the app from the App Store; BestFriendsNetwork (all one word).
Everyone is working for free. We are bootstrapping. We have been fortunate to have over 130 high school and college students helping us over the past two years. The app is designed by teens the Zen masters of social media living the problem day in and day out – yep, and even on weekends.