In je bol

To support young people with questions or concerns about mental health—from stress to loneliness or feeling stuck—seven mission-driven organizations have joined forces: Stichting De Kindertelefoon, MIND Us, MIND, 113 Suicide Prevention, Stichting Join Us, Transformers Community, and Stichting @ease. Together with young people themselves, creative agency Multitude (B Corp certified, just like us) and De Voorhoede, they developed the new platform: In je bol. The fact that so many organizations are launching a platform together is a significant step forward. 

The seven founders of In je bol have been committed to mental health for years, but they also noticed that more needs to be done, especially for young people. A lot of valuable help and information about mental health is scattered, which means that young people often don't know where to start, what is really reliable, and where they can go for help. That is why a single central location was created for everyone between the ages of 16 and 27 to find information about mental health.

Young people can go there for reliable, understandable information, experiences of others, and tips and tools to get started themselves. For a listening ear, the platform offers contact with trained volunteers via chat and telephone.

Young people are often a vulnerable target group, and mental health care is a sensitive subject. In je bol helps young people discover what helps them move forward, without the stigma surrounding mental health issues taking center stage. It is therefore extremely important that young people experience the platform as a safe online space where they feel comfortable going, feel a sense of freedom to share their experiences, and are comfortable in reaching out when they need to. From the start of development, creating a safe online space has been a key theme: from design to code. We would like to highlight two important points: the Save Space and analytics.

To offer young people a safe place, we wanted to create a place where they could store their own content: the Save Space. You can add content such as an experience story or self-test by tapping on a heart. You can find it again later. No one else can access it. Your Save Space is not managed on a database in the cloud, but only in the local storage of your browser on your device.

To let young people know that In je bol exists, campaigns were set up, for example on social media. Often, the starting point is that we want to measure as much as possible. What did someone click on, at what time, from where, how old were they, how does this person navigate our website, what topics does this person find interesting? And so on…

Other organizations would quickly add Google Tag Manager in this situation, allowing marketers to add scripts from social platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram at the touch of a button. The responsibility is hereby shifted to the end user, who must give permission via a consent manager (a cookie screen).

But in this case, those end users are young people who are looking for information on sensitive topics and want to connect with others. That is why the privacy of young people is paramount at In je bol. We looked for a suitable way to measure this without infringing on privacy. Instead of commercial tracking, we opted for Plausible, a privacy-friendly analytics tool that is hosted entirely within the EU and does not collect or store any personal data. Plausible works without cookies, collects only aggregated data, and does not track individual sessions or IP addresses. Young people therefore remain anonymous. In consultation with the marketer, we have carefully determined which insights are needed and how we can collect them in a responsible manner.

For example, we measure how often the low-stimulus mode is used, whether young people use the Save Space, and whether they get stuck in self-help tools. Without collecting personal data from them. Because we do not place cookies, we do not need to display a consent manager. And that is a conscious choice. The absence of a cookie banner contributes to the perception of In je bol as a safe place where you can remain anonymous and tell your story.

We do ask for explicit permission for external content, such as YouTube videos. As a visitor, you will first receive a notification: “YouTube uses cookies to show this video. This requires your permission.” You can then choose whether you want to watch the video on YouTube, allow cookies, or simply continue reading. This allows you, the user, to remain in control.