Pinterest’s New Search Tool Wants You to Relieve Stress

There are currently about 250 million users spend their time creating boards of things that get them excited on Pinterest. The platform is also efficient if you’re looking into more serious topics like mindfulness, health issues or exercising.

Recently, the platform has revealed a new set of “emotional well-being activities”. These will be automatically suggested to the user who searches for topics that might reveal anxiety or stress, as a solution.

One of the exercises developed in partnership with the Stanford School of Medicine’s Brainstorm lab, advise Pinterest users to take some deep breaths. Pinterest has been steering user searches in a more positive direction before.

For example, you type not so positive phrases like “suicide” or “bulimia,” Pinterest will display a message like “Are you struggling with an eating disorder? Help is available” or direct you to the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.
The platform also decides to stop displaying search results on controversial topics that might misinform users on issues like vaccines, for example.

Product manager Annie Ta revealed that the company has a formal name for this idea, and it goes by “compassionate search”.

“We didn’t just decide to throw this in the app,” Ta told Wired. “We decided to put it in the app because people are already searching for these things so much,” she said.

As Pinterest doesn’t aim to be positioned as a social network, these steps make a lot of sense and might make a change for its users.