![]() He's also refining the three-step response, working to ensure the feedback system will be effective at scale. For one, he's been thinking carefully about how to package the app-he doesn't want it to carry the stigmatized language of depression. Recently, Morris formed a startup called Koko to turn Panoply into a consumer app. Compared to a control group that did a generic expressive writing exercise, users who initially exhibited signs of depression showed significant improvements for depression and reappraisal skills after using the platform for three weeks. Morris' initial study on Panoply is being published this week in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. As software goes, it's something of a novelty-a product that aims to enrich lives through precise, clinically-proven means, rather than merely assuming enrichment as a byproduct of its existence. Like other social networks, Panoply will take up that noble goal of connection, but in a more specific, structured way. After a study confirmed the site's effectiveness, Morris formed a company and is now working on turning the idea into a polished consumer app. The site, which was the focus of his doctoral thesis at MIT Media Lab, trained users to reframe and reassess negative thoughts, embedding an established technique called cognitive behavioral therapy in an engaging, unthreatening interface. Starting with the desired effect of helping people deal with depression, he developed Panoply, a crowdsourced website for improving mental health. Robert Morris is taking the opposite approach. We tend to build things first and worry about the effects they have on us later. When we uncritically accept connection as a good thing, we overlook difficult, important questions: Are some forms of virtual communication more nourishing than others? Might some in fact be harmful? Is it possible that Facebook, for instance, leaves some people feeling more lonely? No one knows for sure. Do you think that there is some wiggle room for abuse to happen online via Panoply? Hopefully not though, since that would be self defeating.Social networks aspire to connect people, which is a noble but naive goal. This particular idea is all set to be worked on so that it will blossom into an app that is ready for mass consumption.Īpart from the goal of connecting people, Panoply will do so in a more specific and structured manner, since it intends to enrich lives via precise, clinically-proven means. Panoply happens to be a crowdsourced website that intends to improve mental health, where users of this unique social network have been trained to reframe and reassess negative thoughts, thank to an established technique known as cognitive behavioral therapy. Robert Morris intends to look at social networks in a new way, working on Panoply in order to help those who are suffering from depression. Well, social networks, too, have been the platform where certain cases of cyber-bullying has happened, and this has led to some undesirable consequences as well. Facebook has grown to be immensely popular, although there are studies that show how Facebook usage has begun to wane among the young people. ![]() Social networks happen to be a revolutionary idea in the 21st century, and it has the noble goal of connecting people.
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