Snapchat announced a series of new features designed to educate and empower its members 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 a platform that reaches 90% of users between the ages of 13-34, 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
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.
