I heard an interesting broadcast about a new app that a bright and creative Millennial is developing to help young people better cope with feelings of depression and suicide. The app is called Mood Ring and uses emojis--which some call the language of Millennials-- to log the user's feelings, with alarms that go off when too many "negative" mood emojis are recorded. The alarm triggers one of three friends, previously set up as an accountability team, in real time, to reach out to the user to check in.
The ability to be self-aware of how we are feeling in the moment, and why, is a key component of emotional intelligence. In an time where many in the age group I call "older than Millennials" have a tendency to find fault with our younger generation ("they never want to work", and "they don't know how to communicate" are a few I've heard recently, to my chagrin), it's satisfying to learn of someone who not only understands the nature of the struggles at hand but is willing to create solutions that are applicable.
Here's an excerpt from this morning's interview:
"STORM WHITE: Yeah, so we're often inspired by stories like the ones we just heard. And we wanted to create a platform that replicates the friendship and the bond we just heard of. And so that's kind of where Mood Ring, the name of our app, come in. It's an app that allows young people to track how they're feeling using emojis.
GREENE: These are the emojis that we're familiar with like on mobile devices? I mean, the smiley faces, the sad faces.
WHITE: Yeah, it was a playful way to address something that's really serious. So we wanted it not to be so dark."
Watch/read the entire broadcast here: http://www.npr.org/2016/03/23/471543322/that-moody-teenager-may-be-depressed-but-there-is-help
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