Greatmind Indonesia

With low literacy, Indonesia's huge social media users bring more harm than good: The lack of critical thinking drives the spread of hoax, and the growing power of social media celebrity undermine the role of expert. The viral-chaser culture then resulted in many FOMO-related mental issue. Indonesian netizen is an anxious and lonely angry mob, in which the pandemic exacerbates. As behaviour is the product of the mind, Greatmind provides slower-pace better quality content for the mind to consume, inviting expert and influencer alike to think deeply and share positive impact through relatable personal story to be used as lifehack. A low-cost 'over the counter medicine' for developing country where professional mental health service considered a luxury. As this problem is not exclusively Indonesia, other non-English speaking developing countries could benefited from Greatmind's strategy in mitigating the bad side effect of social media for the mind.

Indonesia has one of the biggest social media users in the world: Top 3 facebook user, top 4 instagram user, top 2 tiktok user, and top 5 most-active twitter user. Contradicting its slow but expensive internet, Indonesian seems to be very keen to consume and create content online. A lot of Indonesian prefer buying internet quota over healthier meal option. With social media penetration at over 88% from its 270 million population, this puts a large amount of the population at an increased risk of feeling anxious, depressed, or ill over their social media use, as research suggest the bad side effect of social media. The Microsoft's Digital Civility Index stated that Indonesian netizen is the most impolite and uncivilized in South East Asia, and instead of proving that wrong the Indonesian netizen mobbed the post until its comment disabled. That's the result of a toxic internet culture. The outrageous output behaviour is the result of the low quality fast-paced click-bait sensational content input that people consumed with their mind. And with everything goes online because of the pandemic, the problem will only got worse.

In developing country with low digital literacy and income, the stigma around mental health is strong and professional mental health support is still considered luxurious. Greatmind provides content as 'over the counter' mental well-being lifehacks material. With the principle of slow media journalism and non-news content, Greatmind beg to differ from its anxiety-inducing surrounding media. By providing free-to-consume mental health material, audiences can take the first step towards becoming a better individual IRL and URL. The audiences need this solution as well, as shown by the exponential growth of Greatmind's social media followers (300+K follower on instagram) and content subscribers (150K+ Youtube subscriber), with vibrant engagement. Greatmind levels its intervention through several deepness:

1st: bitesize, micro blogging via social media,

2nd: long form, article, youtube video and podcast series, livestreamed sessions,

3rd: unplugged, books and printed publication, community event and after hours session, mental health conference and festival, merchandise, directory of mental health service partners, survey and research,

4th: engagement-future development, mentoring, retreat, support group, counselling, professional mental health services and facility.

Aiming to make the mind health so that critical and creative thinking could flourished in digital literate society.

In the initial stage we produced social media content to get traction and get the correct profile of audience that we want to impact, since we want to tackle the social media-driven mental health issue. From the initial page, 87% of our social media audiences are 18-34 years old, half of them is early jobber young people who might not have the capacity to get mental health support. And as many young people in Indonesia still living with their extended family in a tight close setting, many of the older generation might not allowed their youngster to get mental health support, afraid of the stigma. Most of our audience experience a contemporary mental phase, described as the quarter life crisis, a period of self-discovery and self-confusion as they finally reach adulthood. And as the pandemic continues, loneliness for those living alone, and unhealthy conflict with relatives living in close proximity and no escape from home, might have a bad effect to mental well-being. As they enters the workforce as early to mid level worker, their struggle to prove themselves and to outperform in competitive work environment nowadays while navigating work from home amongst other various other crises, and societal pressure worsen by social media they might feel overwhelmed and might led to burn out, or even stress and depression. We gather this insight via social media and community sessions. We also hold focus group discussion with likeminded platform. This year we're also planning to do nation-wide digital survey to get a better and wider understanding of the current mental health epidemic. The solution we have right now by creating more explainer contents to help audiences navigate their daily life. For the non-English speaking Indonesian these contents are valuable, as proved by the testimonies the audiences left in our youtube or social media comments. But in the future the survey might provide valuable direction toward the a righter impact pathways through producing the right content for the targeted audiences' need.

Social-media-induced mental problem is relevant to the Challenge. The pandemic forced people to raise their screen time, it might exacerbate the already stressful pandemic situation, and vice versa, the pandemic worsen the toxicity of internet culture populated with conspiracy and hoax. Greatmind actually tackled two dimensions of the Challenge, Greatmind combat the pandemic mental health impact like loneliness, depression, and stress by producing mental health material. Greatmind also prevent the spread of misinformation by making expert's content on the same pedestal as influencers' content and inspires individual with influencers' personal stories and fact from the expert to affect behavioural change.

We're just done with our incubation period, which comes as surprises as we're passing our four year target milestones in the first year. We test the content to our audiences, in social media, right now with 300+K follower in Instagram, 150K+ subscriber in Youtube, 6K in twitter, and 59K in tiktok. Now we're planning to take the exponential growth towards something more concrete and deep, beyond content in social media, or even long form educational content (that is already proved helpful and liked by many when the pandemic hits) to a more engaging live sessions, responsive counsel chats, nation-wide digital survey, conference, and directory of mental health services. The aim is to target better and make the impact deeper.

Most mental health intervention model was about making Uber for psychologist, or goes deep by creating counselling program and facility, while in a developing country like Indonesia, the term mental health itself often misunderstood, so we need a more long-game integrated approach, that's why Greatmind enters with media model: Providing mental health content and resources for free with revenue from brand sponsorship, so that the impact could be widen first by providing the fast, low-cost, easy-to-use on-demand access to valuable resources. While using its media model to easily spread awareness, build traction and create community. Focusing mostly on contemporary social-media affected mental health issue, Greatmind turns the low-development-cost social media into playing ground for behaviour and mindset change, also for gathering direct insight and response.

Current Number: A total of 2.3 Mio visited the web, 500K+ followed Greatmind various social media, 160+ subscribe to youtube channel

In a year now: 2 Mio per year visitor to website, another 500K follower in Greatmind various social media, 200 subscriber to youtube channel

In five years: Greatmind aims to impact 5 Mio audiences via the web, 1 Mio follower via various social media, 1 Mio subscriber via youtube channel, and additional 10K visitor on Greatmind festival, conference, talk, and sessions

Greatmind will measure the progress by monitoring the visitor of the web, subscriber of the Youtube channel, our follower number, and also their engagement and respond. Also through how many content we produced, how many publication we published, and through various event (conference or small gathering) in which Greatmind held for its target audiences. Lastly we will measure our impact through how many collaboration we made in terms of content production and distribution of content.

Full-Time Staff: 5 People

Part-Time Staff: 2 People

Contractor: 4 People

Most of my team background is from media, some of them actually journalists, the lead editor study the effect of media on mental wellbeing for her master study. As we're also active user of social media, the social-media induced mental problem Greatmind wants to tackle is highly a relevant subject in our day to day life. Some of our employee also experience mental problem in the past, so how they cope with it actually helpful to us understanding our audiences. Some of them also have mix study background, just like me with my bachelor in design and master in psychology. The mix study create a mixture of different perspectives for a great mind to function.

We try to push away bias in our hiring. We have worker from all type of spiritual believes, way of dresses, and sexuality, it's not matter for us. But we do ensure all people correctly represented. One time I was invited to talk on a session about women issue, I ask for replacement with someone else from my team, as I don't feel comfortable speaking about women issue when I'm male. One time my lead editor want to create story about sexual abuse, we have to change the format and finding new people, because she feels like the issue needs to be correctly represented, as she never experienced that kind of trauma before. In the content we also try to create balanced gender representation.

I'm coming from a conventional business background, I want to learn how to grow Greatmind to become a true tech startup, by using the solver network to gain knowledge and valuable mentoring. And as company, Greatmind need credential and the model need to be tested.

Ever since coming out of incubation Greatmind needs a business model fix. As we also considering making the company impact driven we want to make sure we can monitor and measure our impact correctly.

Greatmind would like to partner with other mental-health focus media like the School of Life, or with the Center for Humane Technology to learn and build partnership in making the digital ecosystem safe and sane, or collaboration with global bodies like the UN to help realize SDGs goal in related to well being by leading the partnership in well-being and mental health sector in Indonesia.