Pinterest is not your typical social network — its 250 million users spend their time creating collections of things that make them happy, rather than, say, competing to spread news that might end up making someone sad. And, when Pinterest users search the platform for something dreary, the company does not have any qualms about stepping in.
Last week, Pinterest revealed a new set of ‘emotional well-being activities’ that it will automatically suggest to users who search for phrases that signal that they are undergoing some anxiety or stress or otherwise feeling bad. And, one of those exercises, developed in partnership with the Stanford School of Medicine’s Brainstorm lab, literally asks Pinterest users to take some deep breaths.
This is hardly the first time that Pinterest has steered user searches in a more positive direction. For instance, if you type in phrases like ‘suicide’ or ‘bulimia’, ‘mutilation’ or ‘cutting’, you will be directed towards a message that says something like “Are you struggling with an eating disorder? Help is available”, or if you are in the US you could even find yourself facing a message that directs you to the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.
Pinterest is also the platform that decided to simply stop surfacing search results to controversial topics filled with bad information, like ‘vaccines’.
Speaking about the ‘emotional well-being activities’, the Product Manager at Pinterest Annie Ta said that the company has a formal name for this idea — “compassionate search” — and says the company believes it may fill an actual user need. “We didn’t just decide to throw this in the app,” Ta told the publication. “We decided to put it in the app because people are already searching for these things so much.”
Pinterest does not want to be seen as a social network, which makes sense considering how many do not consider social networks are necessarily good for the world these days, and can even be dangerous and depressing. But maybe that is why tiny steps like this from initiative from Pinterest can feel so refreshing.
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