Draft / Mentor Review / Team Review / Complete Team Name: TBD Team Members: Jinoh Park, Rosalyn Broddie, Ahmed Nuhu, Neel Raval Last Updated: Sat Feb 12, 2022
Our product is aimed to help individuals who have relocated to new locations and have difficulty starting another social circle from the ground up to enjoy weekly acitivities with in real life. This can also be aimed at helping many people, who for a variety of internal and external factors (e.g economic factors, introverted personality) find it difficult to organically create relationships from scratch as they get older.
Social activities sit at the heart of human happiness and satisfaction. But in an increasingly digital world and with external factors such as the Covid-19 pandemic exasperating the increasing sense of loneliness being sensed by broad swathes of the population, the desire for a online platform that decreases the friction for new human relationships has never been greater.
A study conducted by Harvard in February 2021 done on 950 survey participants conveys that “36% of all Americans including 61% of young adults and 51% of mothers with young children feel serious loneliness” with many of these percentages being drastically increased as a result of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Johanni Hari, a prominent reporter/writer in topics of depression and the war on drugs has stated publicly on various popular podcasts and media appearances that there is an epidemic of loneliness in America and particularly the West as a whole. Social media tools have been blamed for the rise of reporting in harmful mental conditions that contribute greatly to the overall feeling of isolation experienced in the West but the blame can also be spread around to ever rising levels of wealth inequality and our decreasing level of faith in our national institutions to perform in times of crisis.
Regardless of who shoulders the blame, the fact is that deep human connection created through shared real life experiences trumps the happiness that is simulated by the quick dopamine hits you get from going viral on a social platform and interacting with usernames and profile pictures.
Another overlap in the demographic of people needing more social connection are individuals who relocated to different parts of the country. A migration report by NorthAmerica stated that there was an overall increase by 20% of people that relocated to different parts of the US. Many of them moving to cities where they have no prior experience or connection with.
By bridging the gap between online interaction and in real life physical activities, we will enable people who would otherwise feel socially impaired by the conditions caused by the present day conditions in the West to create organic friendships through matching them based on mutual shared interests and passions. We want to remove the initial pressure/risk to introduce yourself in real life and bring you straight to a the point of conversation around a common interest which brings both parties happiness. The end result we envision is a platform where people can: