Today marks the culmination of a journey that first began simply to understand the social phenomenon of ghosting.
What followed was a deep dive into existing survey data, academic publications, and long conversations with people who have been impacted by this behavior where people cease communications without an explanation. We even conducted our own surveys to validate our research. Here is a brief review of our findings.
Ghosting is prevalent. Researchers found that almost 50% of study participants experienced some form of ghosting as either the recipient or the initiator of the behavior. A Plenty of Fish survey found this percentage to be far higher for singles who were dating at nearly 80%.
There are consequences. Although it might be a convenient way to end a connection, there are consequences for both the ghostee and the ghoster. A study found that ghosters expressed guilt and remorse for their behavior while ghostees felt a greater threat to their person. Emotions such as sadness and helplessness were much more common.
Nothing can replace in-person interactions. Last spring Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy warned about the loneliness epidemic now facing about half of U.S. adults. In the report, he emphasized the continued importance of in-person social connections versus the lower-quality connections many people now build using social media.
These findings were instrumental to how we built the NoGhosts app from scratch. When you download and start using it, you’ll find an experience geared toward helping you connect with real people who value your time as much as you do. You might be asking how so let’s explain.
Appearance requests. We’ve built a feature called an appearance request. Similar to an invitation to meet, an appearance request has a built-in timer to disappear if the recipient does not take action. Now, you will have the certainty you seek to know if people are serious about meeting people in real life (IRL).
IRL interactions. We agree with the Surgeon General so we built NoGhosts to help people meet in real life because human connections are best built when interacting face-to-face instead of behind a screen. So, we prioritized physical locations over virtual links.
Culture of connection. We aim to build a culture of connection to incentivize people to meet in real life by awarding points and badges along the way. Not only is this a fun way to nudge people to interact but it also helps to build community one real-world connection at a time.
With the app’s release, we’ve reached an important milestone in our startup's history but there are many more to come. So stay tuned and join the movement to make ghosting a thing of the past.
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