How to Get Better at Making Plans

Connecting in the social era

Lindsey (Lazarte) Carson
4 min readDec 4, 2018

--

“woman holding phone” by rawpixel on Unsplash

Technology is changing us and it is our responsibility to make sure that it doesn’t change us for the worst.

Gone are the days when life was as simple as showing up at our friend’s doorstep and spending time together in person. Instead, with the convenience of social media, we are a society that has become addicted to viewing what our friends are doing online, instead of connecting with them and planning to meet up to join the fun

Many social media apps were designed to take advantage of our innate feelings of loneliness our and inherent need for human connection. These apps have perfected a complimentary business model where we become “Hooked” to the app.

But, it doesn’t have to be this way.

We can counteract social media companies’ manipulations by creating a new technology that is just as habit-forming towards bringing us together in-person instead of keeping us apart.

Texting, email, and online messaging has made us jaded.

Communicating through texting and online messaging has become a scapegoat for us to not see our friends and family. We figure that if we just send a simple text or online message, we’ve done our job of “checking in” rather than physically seeing how they are doing.

It has also jaded us in the sense that responding to texts, emails, or online messages has become somewhat of a household chore.

Instead, why can’t we view it as a tool for bringing us together in-person rather than avoiding each other in real life? There needs to be a resolution, a better technology, for allowing us to see our loved ones in-person in a more engaging, simple, and effective way.

That is exactly what rising Pepperdine University Senior, Michael Garas, is on a mission to do.

Over the past year and a half, Michael has been working on an app, to use technology rather than allow technology to use us; to create a better way to bring each other together.

Introducing HangScope.

The new HangScope app is projected to be available Invitation-Only on the Apple App Store in December.

It is simple, casual, and eliminates the need for any back-and-forth planning between multiple people.

With HangScope, you can instantly see when your friends are free and what they are up to.

You will get a notification when you and your friends are free at the same time.

Here is the most important distinction between texting and the HangScope app.

You and your friends will only be notified when you both are free at the same time. Instead of texting and being left with the mystery of whether or not they are too busy to respond, you will know if they are available or not through the HangScope app.

HangScope is simple.

You can invite your friends as many times in a week if you want to because they will not know that you reached out to them unless they are free at the same time.

Steve Jobs, legendary creator of Apple, once said,

“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

So, now it is time for a change.

It’s time to change how reliant we are on technology when it comes to spending time with other people. It’s time that we leverage technology towards seeing each other in-person rather than silently spying on what others are doing online.

Let’s no longer use texting, email, or online messaging as a scapegoat. Let’s instead use an app that will bring us together. Let’s start with HangScope.

*This article is sponsored content in partnership with HangScope

--

--

Lindsey (Lazarte) Carson

Digital Advertising Professional, Writer, Runner, and soon-to-be Mom. I write about work, relationships, culture, and life in general. Twitter: @lindseyruns