How Social Discovery Can Help Cure Loneliness

Even if you’ve never heard of Social Discovery before, you’re helping it to grow and evolve. According to Sensor Tower research, every minute users from different countries spend about $1,600 in Social Discovery apps. Let’s see how this market works and where it will move in the near future.

What is Social Discovery?

For users, Social Discovery is about finding people on the web and communicating online or offline. But in fact, this market is much wider than it seems. It combines technology services that help people expand their social and business connections: social networks, dating apps, games, training, and travel platforms. So, we are talking about the well-known YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Airbnb, TripAdvisor, Dating.com, Tinder, and so on.

Social Nets are outdated?

Nearly 5 billion people use social media, which is 56.8% of the total world population. Due to the popularity of social platforms, the question of how they affect our mental health has appeared on the agenda. And surprisingly, numerous studies have found links between social media and depression, anxiety, and loneliness. For example, a study from the University of Pittsburgh says that every day we scroll through Instagram feed, compare the ideal world on the screen to our lives, and feel dismayed by not living up to it.

We have become more dependent on other people’s assessments, worry about appearances, and remake ourselves to the set standards. There are many applications like Body Tune or Perfect365 that can change you beyond recognition with just a couple of clicks.

More than that, social networks are said to cause FOMO — the fear of missing out on exciting things. Most of the popular platforms do not give us much real interaction experience, and the user there acts as an observer. When we see bright trips and parties in the feed, we catch the sense of missed opportunities.

On the one hand, social networks give us the opportunity to connect, but on the other hand, being in touch doesn’t mean showing attention, sympathy, and love. It’s time for the Social Discovery market to change and come up with new big ideas that will improve our social lives. And it seems to have plenty of shots in the locker.

AI will cure loneliness

During mass isolation, people tried to find their own cure for loneliness. Out of the shadows came the technologies that could act as a “conversation partner” and give users the attention they were looking for. If earlier we used Siri exclusively as an assistant, now more users consider it as a companion.

This stimulated the emergence of a new niche in the Social Discovery market. Companies have begun to offer solutions that connect people and artificial life forms in the digital space. They allow us to build relationships with the help of AI and make virtual friends.

Intuit Robotics has created the ElliQ robot, dubbed the “Happy Aging Helper.” This smart technology reminds the user to take their medications and even play cognitive stimulation games with them.

A completely new form of human-AI relationship is EVA AI, on of the Social Discovery Group's investments. This is a virtual companion who can become a friend or even a romantic partner of the user. It is able to hold a conversation, empathize, support, and even share its feelings as their relationship with the user evolves.

Special apps for psychological help are even prescribed to patients with depression in the USA. For example, Woebot — the chatbot that provides cognitive behavioral therapy. It tracks and analyzes the mood of users during a conversation and helps to improve their emotional state based on the collected data.

Will we live in the metaverse?

When Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company would be renamed to Meta, the net was flooded with articles calling metaverses the new trend of our time. These are digital spaces that simulate reality and combine content, communication, gaming, and other possible forms of communication.

Metaverses offer us another level of interaction with digital reality. We stop watching and start acting: users under the avatars navigate online spaces, hold work meetings, go shopping in marketplaces, and even choose clothes from meta-fashion collections.

Virtual worlds are developed by both small startups and large corporations — Microsoft, Decentraland, Roblox, and others. But a single and full-fledged digital universe does not yet exist. Mark Zuckerberg and Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney say that the force of one company is not enough to build a new digital world, they just create parts of one huge metaverse.

VR and AR technologies are not mature enough for our life to move into the metaverse. VR glasses are too heavy to wear for more than 30 minutes, and the metaverse itself lacks the quality of graphics and simulation of sensations. But the statistics say we will soon see the rise of Social Discovery in virtual reality.

Social Discovery Group estimates that 25% of romantic relationships will be started in the metaverse in 2026. Dating.com, the flagman company's dating platform, has recently announced a series of virtual events in the metaverse. The first event, which occurred in April, ran for two hours and featured multiple games and icebreakers, including movie and TV trivia.

According to KJ Dhaliwal, CSO at Social Discovery Ventures, society will gradually get used to the phenomenon of the metaverse and communication with AI over the next decade.

The gamification trend

New virtual worlds should constantly surprise the user, keeping their attention. And if earlier we immersed ourselves in games in order to take a break from reality, now reality becomes a pause in the constant gameplay.

Gamification has even made its way into dating apps. Here we can see another SDG investment Magnet — application, where the users get cartoon avatars instead of uploading their photos. No photos, and therefore no appearance bias. Users cannot judge each other’s appearance until they chat and both agree that they vibe. Also, every morning users receive trending icebreaker questions designed to ignite connections. These questions cover a wide range of topics, from light-hearted inquiries like "Is Elvis still alive?" to more thought-provoking ones such as "Are we witnessing the decline of social media in America?" After that, the user can open a chat with someone who answered the same way, or the opposite to have a discussion. The purpose of these icebreaker questions is to foster meaningful conversations and enable individuals to form deeper connections. What sets our app apart from others is that if two individuals discover a shared interest or vibe, they are given the exclusive opportunity to unveil each other's real photos, adding an extra layer of authenticity to their interaction.

Social platforms quickly became popular and start to lose their relevance at the same speed. Users have created a demand for new features and apps to communicate in digital spaces. Therefore, metaverse, artificial intelligence, and gamification in social applications can become a cure for loneliness on the web. AI will soon be able to win the favor of users, and with the rise of VR and AR, we will no longer be limited by the screens of our devices. As a result, Social Discovery will offer us new and better forms of digital connection.

Also published here.