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Snapchat rolls out the first of its Mini apps with meditations from Headspace

Snapchat rolls out the first of its Mini apps with meditations from Headspace

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The mini app will allow friends to share meditation sessions together

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Snapchat

The first of Snap’s new Mini applications rolled out Monday, with tools from meditation app Headspace, part of an initiative “to help support the mental health and emotional wellbeing of Snapchatters,” a Snap spokesperson said in a statement.

Snap announced it was launching Minis at its virtual Partner Summit last month. The Minis, as the name suggests, are miniature apps made by third-party developers that run inside of Snapchat to create more social experiences among friends, and they are built using HTML.

The Headspace Mini is one of four Snap is launching this week. The others are Let’s Do It, which lets groups make decisions together, Prediction Master from Mammoth Media, which “serves timely questions on everything from the Stock Market to sneaker drops, so Snapchatters can see which of their friends is the true psychic,” and Flashcards by Tembo, to create study aids.

Snap says its research shows that feelings of anxiety, depression, stress, and other mental health challenges are high among its users, and it found that users usually want to turn to their friends first when dealing with these feelings. “That research helped inform how we designed this Headspace mini — we are putting resources front and center where Snapchatters already talk to their close friends, and we hope this new feature will provide a safe space for friends to practice mindfulness, and be able to send encouraging messages to positively boost friends in need,” the spokesperson said.

The Headspace Mini has six meditation sessions, which are three to four minutes long, and include themes like “Just Breathe,” “Get Out of a Funk,” “Kick the Panic,” “Be Nice to You,” “Pressure to Succeed,” and “Me Time.”

Snapchat’s audience is one of the youngest on social media, reaching 90 percent of 13- to 34-year-olds. It rolled out its Here For You search tool in March to help users feeling anxious or stressed over the novel coronavirus pandemic, the company says, surfacing “safety resources” from mental health experts when users search for topics like anxiety, depression, suicide, or bullying.

There are a couple of ways to access the Headspace Mini in Snapchat; you can enter via the Here for You vertical or you can tap the rocket icon in Chat to start a conversation with friends and meditate together. If you prefer to meditate solo, type the word “Headspace” in the search bar to find it.

“By putting these useful resources front and center where friends already meet and share, we believe Snapchat can play a unique role in empowering friends to help each other through difficult times,” a Headspace spokesperson said in an email to The Verge.