Tools to improve digital wellbeing

2021

Tools to improve digital wellbeing

The pandemic has increased the amount of time young people spend online, not only for personal use but also for educational purposes. 

With the increased usage of smartphones and social media, young people prone to bullying are likely to cyberbully. In addition, hate speech on social media is on the rise, tending more and more towards intolerance and less permissive of the diversity of opinion. 

In the past few months, we have come across a couple of tools that we believe can have a significant impact on young people's digital well-being, which we present to you below:

Tune is a Chrome extension that helps people control the volume of the conversation they see. It allows people to customize how much toxicity they want to see in comments across the internet, especially on social media channels including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or Reddit.

This experimental tool lets you turn the volume of toxic comments down for “zen mode” to skip comments completely or turn it up to see everything—even the mean stuff. Or you can set the volume somewhere in between to customize the level of toxicity (e.g. attacks, insults, profanity, etc.) you’re willing to see in comments.

On the other hand, R;ppl is a tool that helps to intercept harmful content relating to self-harm and/or suicide through innovative technology. The engine ensures that all users searching for harmful content online are presented with an opportunity of hope that things can and will get better, offering immediate mental health support and resources.

It works as a browser extension for Chrome and Microsoft edge to minimise the risks of the internet while harnessing its potential for good.

Do you think you spend too much time on your smartphone? How about having a live counter as wallpaper? This is what Screen Stopwatch is about. Developed by Google Creative Lab, the engine consists of a counter that starts running as soon as you unlock your mobile phone. You would be surprised how many hours per week we spend online!