Discursive essay on technology and human relationships
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Answer:
I’ve been thinking a lot about the limits of technology in solving social problems. As the co-founder and executive director of a mental health non-profit, I’ve become increasingly immersed in the social entrepreneurship community, which has introduced me to some fascinating people, inspiring leaders, and important ways to think about non-profit sustainability, impact and scale. I also spent the last three years in Silicon Valley. Both of these communities have been formative for me, but they can both be myopic in their view that technology can solve all problems.
This is especially true in the mental health field. Mental health technology is a booming new space; there are thousands of mental health apps in the ITunes and Android App stores, and the number is growing everyday. And while there are benefits to this technology (convenience, anonymity, access for more people at a lower cost), there are also reasons for caution. There are no standards for evaluating the effectiveness of these apps, and many programs oversell their benefits. In fact, maintaining client engagement with many of these apps has been a challenge, with usage dwindling rapidly over the first few months. But unbridled techno-optimists tend to ignore these drawbacks, some now celebrating the idea that robots can replace humans as therapists.
In the past few months, I’ve been a finalist in two social entrepreneurship pitch competitions. I lost both of them, and like any good social entrepreneur, I contacted all the judges for feedback. What could I do better next time – delivery, framing of the problem, was something unclear? Their response was interesting. “No, your pitch was great. But there wasn’t enough technology.”