PROVO — Liking, tagging, poking, sharing: It’s the future — and the present — of how we interact with each other.
But does it have to be?
The team behind ZooWho, a new social media app launched out of Provo last month, says no.
Improving the quality of friendships — rather than increasing the quantity — is the focus of the app, which lets users record personal details about friends and sends reminders of upcoming occasions. Rather than prompting users to write a birthday wish on a friend’s Facebook wall, for instance, it encourages them to send a card or gift in advance, a practice that’s become rarer as sending well-wishes with one click has become easier. The team behind the app says the goal is to facilitate, rather than replace, real-life interactions.
Concern about how platforms like Facebook and Instagram are changing the way we communicate isn’t a new phenomenon. Countless studies and think-pieces have debated the effects of social media on our social lives, with mixed results. But while ZooWho was born in part out of disdain for what CEO Sean Bair describes as the “sterilization” of human interaction by online networks like Facebook, it seems social media is here to stay.
The question now, the ZooWho team says, isn’t whether to use social media. It’s how to use it.
“It’s not that social media is the problem,” said Brayden Babbitt, ZooWho’s 22-year-old media communications manager. “It’s that we’ve become accustomed to using social media the wrong way.”
Research suggests that social media hasn’t replaced face-to-face interaction, says Samuel Hardman Taylor, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago who studies social media and relationships. But whether it enhances or reduces our feeling of social connectedness depends less on the amount of screen time and more on how that time is spent.
“Social media and digital media are so integrated into every aspect of our lives, from the most mundane to the most intimate parts of who we are, that time is just too simple of a way of thinking about it,” Taylor said.
In other words, spending a half-hour messaging a friend on Facebook or exchanging photos directly through Snapchat can result in a meaningful interaction and deepen a friendship — but 30 minutes of scrolling through photos of beautiful, picture-perfect strangers on an Instagram feed may make you feel even more socially isolated.
The aim of ZooWho isn’t to stop people from using other social networking platforms. Users can connect to Instagram and other accounts through the app, letting them streamline a friend’s social media presence in one place.
But rather than accruing likes, the goal is “intentionality and quality,” said Bridget Nistler, ZooWho’s social media manager. “It does integrate those kinds of social media, but it’s interested in the depth of the relationship, not the breadth.”
“It’s easy to look at my friend’s Instagram feed and say, ‘I like that photo,’ and forget what it even means to them,” Babbitt added. Besides serving as a digital rolodex of sorts where users can log information about friends and family — likes, dislikes, aspirations, important dates, past and upcoming life events — ZooWho keeps track of how often users communicate with their contacts, encouraging them to reach out: to send a text or make a call, or set up a time to meet in person.
“Instead of pushing you to interact with someone from a distance or digitally, it’s pushing you to do something in the real world,” Babbitt said. “It’s not just making sure that you can connect with more people, which is what a lot of social media does.”
Babbitt and Nistler, both students at Brigham Young University, are members of Generation Z. Having grown up on and around social media, they are, as society’s assumptions would dictate, the generation most likely to feel comfortable interacting through a screen — and least likely to feel comfortable interacting directly.
Photo-based app Instagram, the appeal of which lies largely in filters, comments, and likes, is among the most popular social networking platforms for teens and 20-somethings. But the success of some other apps over the years suggests a demand for more intimate interactions than Instagram likes.
Houseparty, a group video-chatting app that touts itself as a tool for more meaningful, authentic connections, quickly rose in popularity among teenagers after coming on the scene in 2016. Users had a median number of 23 friends, Insider reported last year — well below the typical number of Instagram or Facebook friends.
“Social media started as this promise to connect people,” Houseparty co-founder Sima Sistani told Insider. “I don’t think the social media that’s out there today is delivering on that promise.”
Before Houseparty, other apps — such as Snapchat, which focuses on one-on-one interactions and is like-free, and the now-defunct Friendster, which in 2003 became one of the first social media platforms — have served a similar function.
In some ways, social media is what you make it. The degree of intimacy and personalization can vary even within the same app, Taylor pointed out. When people think of Instagram, they may think of sponsored influencers with thousands, even millions, of followers. But a relatively recent trend among teens is to create what’s known as a “finsta” — an account for close friends only, where imperfection and authenticity are prioritized over poses and filters.
“Since social media has really become a part of our everyday life, people have been using them in a way to have this network but also have these really close connections with people,” Taylor said.
“ZooWho allows you to remember, why is this meaningful? It’s not just that I can like my friend’s photos. I can understand what it means to them and where they’re coming from.” — Brayden Babbitt, ZooWho media communications manager.
Sitting in ZooWho’s small Provo office on an October afternoon, Bair lamented a recent missed opportunity. Just an hour earlier, he said, he’d learned via Facebook that it was his aunt and uncle’s wedding anniversary. He scrawled out a quick comment to post, but wished he’d done more.
“A more thoughtful and loving and caring approach would have been to know about it a week ago” and to send a card or gift, Bair said. “It’s kind of sad that that’s how it had to be. I think Facebook has really sort of sterilized a lot of our relationships in that regard.”
If misuse of Facebook and Twitter and Instagram has sterilized our relationships, why not just return to an analog life? Why add another app to the mix?
It’s a matter of having the “right tools for the right job,” Bair said — an app to help use other apps in a healthier and more productive way. “I need at least some tool to help me keep track of that much data.”
With so much of that data already existing online, it makes sense that the tool would live in that world, too. Bair sees the app’s potential as extending beyond friendship into the business networking world, and even as an asset for faith leaders to help keep track of congregants.
ZooWho is “not just meant be another social media app that I have to interact with or consume,” he said. “It’s a tool to help with the tools, really.”
Since launching in September, ZooWho has attracted several hundred users in 11 countries, including Finland, South Africa and Brazil.
Babbit and Nistler say they and their friends have started using the app for a range of purposes, from following up with job recruiters to church ministry. Recently, it sent Nistler a reminder of a friend’s upcoming birthday, prompting her to send a gift through the app — “something to let her know I cared” — that would arrive with plenty of time to spare.
“You might receive a text every six months from your friend in high school and you’re like ‘Oh, awesome, great,’” Nistler said. “But we want people to build a foundation of a network that’s really solid and that lasts.”