Not Really Strangers

Inspiration

The pandemic has brought forth extremely testing times upon us. Many of us have become socially isolated, stressed out, and extremely anxious. Interaction is a necessity for human beings and the lack of it causes many challenges for mental health. Therefore, we wanted to make something that will not only uplift people but also connect them with each other to increase their levels of social interaction. To do that in a safe manner, we present to you our solution.

Solution

A journaling website that helps individuals reflect on a plethora of prompts and share their stories with other users. According to the US National Institute of Health, self-reflection was the top factor in improving one’s mental health, with counseling and interaction following closely behind. Taking this into account, we not only enable our users to type out their responses and reflect, but we also let them share their stories with others to simulate human-to-human interaction. Users will not only be inspiring others through their stories but will also gain inspiration and happiness by reading others' responses to similar prompts. This way, if people are feeling low, for example, reading someone else’s story on how they overcame a similar situation can instill a sense of hope.

How we built it

Challenges we ran into

We had a lot of issues writing and reading from files to get our prompts and the users answers.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What we learned

What's next for Not Really Strangers

We want to grow this to be a larger project that everyone around the world can benefit from. We believe that our product has the potential to make a large impact on users.