Atlas, a social media wellness app, was introduced to MHS students by their teachers during the advisory period on Wednesday, Nov. 4, Assistant Principal Jennifer Hutchison said in an email interview. MHS administrators decided to share this app with all students to support those struggling with mental health issues, which have increased since the COVID-19 pandemic, Hutchison said.
The Atlas developer team is made up of co-founders Max Savage, Justin Lai, and Dipa Halder, Hutchison said. Savage reached out to MUSD’s Mental Health Program Manager Sandra Quintana, who presented Atlas to MHS staff, Hutchison continued. After doing research, holding informational meetings, and asking a lot of questions about the app, the administrators unanimously determined it was a great addition to the school’s resources, Hutchison said.
“We know that our capacity for counselors and mental health providers is limited. With our limited resources, we try to find research-based approaches to provide these services in mass,” Principal Francis Rojas said in a Zoom interview. “Not only does [Atlas] provide the service, it also provides an awareness. If you think back to five years ago, no one was talking about social-emotional learning, but now, with a program like Atlas, all those topics are there, even if you don’t have a problem.”
As a school and district, the staff is always looking for ways to support students not only academically, but as whole people, Hutchison said. Atlas is designed with the unique needs of young people at heart, and so it is one more tool MHS administrators could add to maintain positive mental health and physical well-being and to help students cope with their struggles, she added.
“If it helps one student through a rough time, it is well worth it,” Hutchison said. “That is what it is all about. While life can be great, and students may or may not be in a good place, growing up is hard. Being a teen is hard. Being in a global pandemic is hard. We want to support students through all of it.”
Atlas has a wide variety of podcasts students can explore, Rojas said. As students and teachers access these modules, we receive reports that tell us which topics are the most popular, he added. The first couple of weeks after the launch, the top three topics were about stress management, time management, and lack of sleep, Rojas continued.
“With that data, we can work with our mental health providers [at MHS], and we talk to the counselors [about] where students are really struggling,” Rojas said. “So now that we have this, we will take a look at the data that the company provides as well as any feedback that we get, and we will see if it’s something we want to continue, but I think it is very important to keep something like this.”
The concept is really good, senior Darren Ung said in a Google Meet interview. Social media is supposed to be very personal and should allow you to connect to the people that you really care about, Ung continued.
“When everyone is enmeshed in this amorphous blob of strangers it becomes very difficult to actually communicate properly. By restricting your followers to 25 people that you really care about, the app allows for a free form of thought. It should work,” Ung said. “The big flaw is that we’re not used to it. With Instagram and Twitter, the big amorphous blob of strangers isn’t that good, but it’s what we grew up with. Now that we have to lock ourselves down to 25 friends, it’s a little difficult.”
Atlas can be used in classes, among a group of friends, or by yourself, and it is free, Hutchison said. Currently, 799 students have registered with Atlas, Hutchison continued. During the first week after the launch, 37 people interacted with information on how to deal with election stress, 37 were interested in a session about procrastination, and 10 people were interested in a topic titled, “I can’t get over my ex,” Hutchison added.
“We would love to have more students and staff explore all that the app has to offer. I think we all need ‘tools’ for our ‘toolkits’ for self care. This is the opportunity for one more,” Hutchison said. “It is an application that addresses many of the issues or needs that individuals can experience in a safe and healthy manner,” she added. “I also believe that as we learn and grow in our own mental health and life skills for dealing with issues, we can help others by sharing our knowledge. If students learn something, they can, in turn, help another person. There are so many positive outcomes from using this app.”
The podcasts seem really promising, and because they are only two to five minutes in length, the topics are very focused, Ung said. Even though the concept of the app is rather reflexive to most people’s current understanding of social media, it could be very useful to students struggling with mental illness because it encourages closer contact with the people that matter most to you, he added.
“It is more like a toolkit for people than actually like something that you can binge for a few hours,” Ung said. “It would require a severe upheaval of our online social dynamic. But if that came to fruition, I do believe that Atlas would work and it would be healthy.”