NordPass x Hostinger: The Importance of Mental Health in the Digital Age

Today we’re joining forces with Hostinger to spark a discussion about how technology can ease people’s life, improve the mental well-being of those online, and why it is important to keep all of this in mind when developing an online tool.

Mental health in the digital age

First celebrated in 1992 on October 10, today World Mental Health Day is a global effort aimed to raise awareness and reduce social stigma with regard to mental health.

The dictionary defines mental health as the condition of someone's mind, which, while true, is also quite vague. When we talk about mental health, we talk about our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. We talk about how it affects us, how it makes us feel, think, and act. Mental health is a vital part of our lives at every stage from childhood to adulthood.

It is important to understand that everyone faces mental health challenges and risks, no matter their age, sex, income, or ethnicity. Social and personal relationships, financial circumstances, biological factors, as well as lifestyle choices have a tremendous effect on a person’s mental health.

In today’s digital world, our online interactions also play a crucial role in our mental health. Social media greatly influences our view of ourselves and others. We know that the excessive use of social media can also increase FOMO and feelings of inadequacy, dissatisfaction, and isolation. In turn, such feelings can negatively affect our mood, cause stress, anxiety, and even induce depression. While the internet is surely a great tool, it is crucial to understand that it has downsides that should not be ignored.

How can tech companies contribute to better personal mental well-being?

Hostinger

Going the extra mile by boosting employees’ well-being. At Hostinger, we work and play hard. But, to keep it up, it’s important to rest so you don’t get exhausted or even burn out. Rest should equal activity, since its deficiency can negatively affect mental health, which in turn affects happiness, relationships, creativity, and productivity. In order to tackle this challenge head on, we go the extra mile caring about people’s mental health at Hostinger. Whether it is an online workshop focused on preventing burnout, a stress management session, or a creative workation on SummerHub, it’s all dedicated to boosting employees’ energy and motivation.

NordPass

At NordPass, we strongly believe that tech companies can educate, inspire change, support relevant organizations, and do much more to raise awareness when it comes to mental health. Internally, we provide our team with access to physical therapy, which goes hand in hand with mental health, like a variety of mental health apps and workshops. Externally, we try our best to shine some light on issues regarding digital technology and mental health by conducting research and letting our users know that digital stress and anxiety are real and should not be ignored. For instance, last year we launched an initiative to highlight how technology can affect our mental well-being.

What kind of stress do your users experience?

Hostinger

Our customers are concerned about the overall online experience, from starting to hosting and managing their websites. The primary concerns range from limited experience in web development and looking for and choosing the most suitable hosting plan to the fear of technical challenges, problems, and security issues.

NordPass

When talking about our users’ pain points, we talk about password resets, the immense number of login credentials that an average user has to handle, forgotten accounts, as well as data breaches and data leaks. All of this can and often does induce anxiety and stress, and we hope that NordPass helps our users experience the internet the way it was meant to be — worry-free.

How do concepts of Making People’s Life Easier and Peace of Mind reflect in the products you create?

Hostinger

At Hostinger, our mission is to make life easier for website developers and their customers. We do it by offering easy-to-use, fast, and reliable web-hosting services.

• Intuitive in-house-developed hPanel. We fine-tune every aspect of the hosting experience until every step of building a website is intuitive for beginners and straightforward for professionals.

• Security. All data is secured. We protect customers’ websites with multiple levels of fail-safes, RAID-10, daily or weekly backups. All of our 7 data centers are distributed globally to keep websites fast in every country. Additionally, hosting plans include Access Manager, LiteSpeed web server, Cloudflare integration, Let’s Encrypt integration, in-house developed WAF.

• Fast and stable services. Safety, fast performance, and stability are equally important. We strive to maintain 99.99% uptime for customers’ websites. Our servers operate on CloudLinux — the leading OS for hosting providers. We renew our systems on a regular basis, shielding servers from DDoS attacks and improving their speed with the newest LiteSpeed technologies.

• Reliability. Showing how to solve a problem is the best way to guide customers towards success. Our technical support team is here 24/7/365 to navigate customers through any pains they might experience while working on their websites.

• Additional stress-free features. Hostinger offers additional features such as free SSL (it makes encrypted connections, so your visitors feel safe when entering your website), backups (daily backups prevent you from data loss when errors happen), or One-Click WordPress Installation (after you settle for WordPress, you can say no more. Click one time, and we handle the rest) to make the online experience smooth and stress-free.

NordPass

Our mission at NordPass is to cultivate a community where digital life is safe and easy as well as to develop affordable digital security products with a passion for detail: simpler, nicer, faster, and safer.

• Simplicity. We propagate cohesive and straightforward user experience. We ensure our users are not confused or disoriented while using NordPass. We employ easy-to-use UX patterns and practices and adapt our apps in accordance to native OS standards to allow our user to achieve their goals effortlessly.

• Security. NordPass is purpose-built to ensure the security of all the data that our users store in their encrypted vaults. We operate under zero-knowledge principles and employ advanced encryption algorithms for complete security so our users could have peace of mind online.

• Instant access to online accounts. An average internet user handles around 100 passwords. It’s a lot. NordPass helps users gain immediate access to all their favorite online accounts with just a few clicks. Thanks to the autofill feature, our users no longer have to remember or manually type their passwords. This not only lifts the unnecessary load off our users’ shoulders but also improves their efficiency in dealing with day-to-day tasks, whether in their personal or professional environment.

• Advanced security features. NordPass is equipped with advanced security features, like the Password Health tool, which enables our users to assess their password strength, or Data Breach Scanner, which allows them to find out whether any of their personal data has been exposed in a data leak. We strongly believe that these tools allow our users to feel a lot safer in the digital world.

• Devoted support. Our amazing customer support team helps our users solve any problems they might have using NordPass. The support team operates 24/7 and is ready to assist our users whenever they feel the need.

  NordPass – Your Intuitive Password ManagerNordPass, Your Intuitive Password Manager

What is your long-term advice to the tech community as a whole?

Hostinger

Being keen on artificial intelligence, self-learning, and automation brings us more challenges but also helps us focus on the customer as a core element. Therefore, the human touch still remains the critical ingredient while building a valuable product and a strong business.

It’s important to think of tech and humanity as complementary parts, collectively working towards a better future. While never losing sight of what tech is, we believe that building a connection with customers is what encourages companies not to lose their heads and continue striving for inspiring long-term goals.

NordPass

According to Gediminas, our beloved head of product at NordPass, helping people with mental well-being as a tech company seems to be quite a difficult task — people often feel that businesses do not strive to legitimately help their users. Today, the public is rather skeptical as they have been bombarded with a variety of campaigns regarding mental health for years. Most people believe that tech companies are out there to make money, and those campaigns are a ploy to make a profit and nothing more. That view is understandable, but it’s not entirely true.

The social value that a tech company or digital product can bring is the community around it. Community-based products or services capture the interest of people who want to solve the same problems. With strong communities built around their products, companies give their users a chance to find a sense of belonging and like-minded people.

After all, the sense of belonging is a huge factor in mental well-being.

“Build a community, find your mission, and let the people support each other.” - Gediminas Brencius, Head of Product @ NordPass.