why we're building healthy social media

Let’s start here: what does “healthy social media” even mean?

Social media is a place to find community. It’s a place to connect and interact with people - something essential for nourishing our souls - in the same way that eating nourishes us.

Often we think about what we put in our mouths, checking ingredients, reading labels. We make sure our food appears to be healthy. We know how important that is.

Not so often do we think about what goes into our brains.

When we eat, we know our food will be digested and ultimately nurture or damage our bodies.

Somehow we let ourselves forget that in the same way, what we hear and see nurtures our brains. Content has an effect on us and our mood. Whereas unhealthy food causes stomach aches, unhealthy content affects our mental health.

In my volunteer work as a counselor on a suicide prevention line, I had a lot of phone calls from teenagers and young adults dealing with a great amount of stress due to social media.

Girls called because they felt they were not pretty enough to “be alive”.

Young teenagers got cyber bullied because the content that they posted was “weird”.

Young adults called sharing stories of very unhealthy relationship patterns.

Social media shows the best, glossiest version of everyone. It makes us feel like no one is struggling. It’s hard for us to even believe that people who seem popular, rich, or successful have challenges, too. There’s so much content online about raising our voices against discrimination, but when you pause to listen to the lyrics - and I mean really listen - from the top trending TikTok lyrics, it’s shocking.

Even more shocking for me is that really young kids - younger than their teens, even - dance to and celebrate this music. It’s impossible to avoid it. If you don’t do it, you don’t trend.

That’s why I’m so passionate about what we’re building at ZigZag. We’re creating a revolutionary social media platform. It’s a place where people can connect and interact in a healthy way! ZigZag is a social app with a music library that celebrates friendship, love, and family. It’s a social media where people are interested in connecting with each other, asking each other questions, supporting each other and creating together. It’s a positive, inclusive space. That’s what social media should be.

And we really do care. In honor of Mental Health Awareness month, we’re partnered with Didi Hirsh, an LA-based mental health nonprofit, to bring our users a totally-free mental health discussion event. We believe so firmly that it’s important to break the stigma, start he conversation, and make services like Didi Hirsch’s accessible for everyone, everywhere.

We’d love for you to join us, both for upcoming events, and on ZigZag! Check out download information below.

DOWNLOAD ZIGZAG:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zigzag-video-collaboration/id1500854244