A Denver man hopes an app he helped create can be the opposite of most social media.
Pencivis a journaling tool and social app that encourages users to track their feelings and share them with close family and friends. Penciv co-founder Jinhyun Shin said a background in suicide prevention work led him to look for solutions to loneliness.
“We are in this loneliness epidemic and hopefully we've given people a tool to help respond to that,” Shin said.
The Penciv app has two main tools. First, users log their feelings using a digital journal and a feelings wheel that creates a digital representation of their feelings. They can then see how the data changes week to week or month to month.
Shin brought the app to Mark Allsman, a licensed professional counselor candidate at Authentic Life Christian Counseling. Allsman is now using it with clients.
“I think this really helps with the first step and helping people to track for themselves and see, there's a lot of sadness here, there’s a lot of anger here, a lot of confusion, different things that may be coming up in different spaces,” Allsman said.
The second tool is the social part of it. Users are not required, but they are encouraged to add a community of friends and family members who can see their posts.
“It’s more like a newsletter than it is social media because you're choosing everybody, they can't see who else can see it, and in that way it's very personal between the author and the recipient," Shin said.
He hopes Penciv can promote better connections between people. He believes it can help with mental health in the same way that talking to a friend can help. It can also be used in conjunction with professional mental health treatment.
The Penciv app is available for free on the Apple and Google Play stores.
