We all utilize text messengers for a variety of conversations. In general, you can convey how you feel via text by emphasizing it with emojis/stickers available.
However, we’ve known cases of teenagers getting depressed or tackling with a mental health issue, even if they convey their feelings to their friends or family via text. So, there’s some special care to be taken to help them with their situation.
“Texting is the native mode of communication for today’s teens and a key reason for the success of the Kik messaging app“.
– Catherine Teitelbaum (Head of trust and Safety, Kik)
And, yes, that’s very true.
For this particular reason, Kik Interactive integrated the counseling support by partnering with Crisis Text Line to give confidential support to people in crisis.
The press release describes the working as follows:
Within Kik, Crisis Text Line helps social networks manage various crisis situations. A bot scans conversations for words related to abuse, bullying, depression, suicide, eating disorders, self harm, and more, to triage and redirect high risk users to the Crisis Text Line bot. In minutes, the user in distress is given the opportunity to connect with a trained human counselor via chat.
Catherine also mentioned how the service would encourage users to utilize it:
“Crisis Text Line is a perfect fit for Kik because the service enables our users to communicate as they normally would with their friends and family and feel safe in their anonymity while discussing personal matters with trained Crisis Counselors.”
So, yeah, it’s a good initiative by Kik Messenger to help the teenagers using the messaging platform.
What do you think about it? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.