In the last decade we have seen the consequences of a growing disconnect between social media and real life – and the subsequent declining mental health among young adults. Add to this, that we spend a quarter of our lives in virtual social systems according to Center for Human Technology, a think tank in California.
Addiction as a profit-maximizing mechanism
Millennials are the first generation to have grown up with social media, and we now know that social media addiction leads to loneliness, declining mental health and lower quality of life. The problem is that social media is primarily built around the needs of advertisers and not that of users. The business model behind social media growth engines is therefore designed around addiction as a profit-maximizing mechanism. The social media industry’s current business model is therefore due for a significant disruption!
Loneliness
Loneliness and mental health issues gives rise to healthcare costs – in Denmark alone, 20% of working age people suffer from mental illness resulting in 25% of all healthcare costs. Also, we see a growing trend toward more people living alone fostering more lonely people. Before we lived in traditional nuclear families with mother, father and children, but this family pattern is now breaking up – alone in Denmark there were 1.245.000 people living for themselves in 2021 – more that 20% of the total Danish population.
Reducing social anxiety
LifeBonder is a safe space reducing social anxiety to facilitate new off-platform friendships in the local area sharing a healthier reality through real-life connections and experiences.
LifeBonder’s mesaverse is filling a growing need for a deeper reality with real life experiences outside social media platforms – fighting the negative impact of social media and thereby increasing the quality of life for young adults.
An alternative social media
LifeBonder is a mesa-verse and an alternative to the meta-verse. A meta world is not the real world. That is what meta means from the Greek meaning above or beyond. It imitates – but are not real. At best it is a reflection of our reality.
The opposite of above or beyond, is within. The Greek word for this is mesa. Hence, a mesa-verse is a deeper world – a deeper reality. This is the real lived life where you get your true value and life experiences from.
To enter a mesa-verse is the opposite of entering a meta-verse. Rather than entering a reflection of reality, one enters a deeper reality – the real lived existential life. Like waking up from the Matrix, after long time addition and then having been detoxed. LifeBonder keeps people from getting stuck in virtual reality – in the reflection of the real world.
The deeper longing and existence that nobody experiences online is everywhere in everything we do and share. “Living” in a meta-verse doesn’t make us feel any better or healthier – only lonelier and more isolated. To escape this nightmare of the meta-verse, we need to seek the mesa-verse. We need a detox from virtual reality to descent from the metaverse into the deeper reality of life right here and now to live a fulfilled and happy life.
Jesper Simonsen
I am the founder of LifeBonder and my mission is to create a social media platform that lives up to the promise of what social media can be: A tool to facilitate human connections in real life rather than replacing them online. I want to make the world a better place by filling a growing need for direct socializing outside social media while fighting he negative impact of social media - reconnecting people in friendships that are human, profound and meaningful.
