We need a real social app

We live in the age of social apps and yet, our generation suffers from lack of real connections.

This is a real danger to our health. According to a TED talk about what makes a good life, by Robert Waldinger, the director of the Harvard study of adult development - a 78 years study with 724 participants, it was concluded that "good relationships keeps us happier and healthier". Another TED talk called "The secret to living longer might be your social life" by Susan Pinker, talks about how the residents of a small Italian island has a long lifespan which the lecturer links to the people interactions with their community. All of these support the fact that our interactions with other people makes our life happier, healthier and longer.

But that’s ok, we are the generation of social apps, we have hundreds or even thousands of friends on social networks, we should be fine, right? Well, no. Recent researches show that the existing social apps have the opposite effect as we would think, they actually make us more depressed and lonely, and if that is the case, it is no wonder that millennials are the loneliest age group alive. One out of five Americans nowadays is lonely.

Why then, do the existing social apps are not improving our social life?
Firstly, you cannot compare face-to-face connections with virtual ones. Our communication is 2/3 non-verbal and only 1/3 verbal, so when we text someone we lose all the face gestures, the body language, tone of voice which are an integral part of our communication. This is a much lesser version of communication, which does not create the same level of connections as a real-life meeting.
Secondly, our current social apps give us the wrong impression that we sustain a huge amount of connections (hundreds of friends), but in fact, they just keep us informed about what the people we met in our life are doing, just like a newsletter, but one that its articles were written and edited by their subjects, meaning we are very likely to be misinformed in those newsletters. This misinformation may even cause us to feel bad about our life, as other researches show. Seeing only the good stuff people are posting about their life, can cause us to feel bad about our lives.
Overall, the existing social apps just don't deliver the goods.

The existing social apps are pulling us to a virtual social life, instead of improving our real one. Humankind is a social race, it needs a real social life in order to live well. We deserve a real social app, one that will give us a real option to connect with others, to share activities with others, because in the end it won't matter how much "likes" you get on your life posts, what will matter are the connections you've made and the time you shared with them. We hope that RippleCircle will be the app that use our modern technology to enhance our social life rather than try to make an alternative virtual one.

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