Leave an inheritance that is priceless: Future Messages, with Kin
There’s something undeniably appealing about digging through old family photo albums. There’s the hilarious blackmail-worthy snaps from the 70s and 80s where many unfortunate haircuts and fashion choices were made. But there’s also the magic of seeing black-and-white photos of your grandparents in their 20s, dressed in their Sunday best with the whole family proudly posing in front of the family car. Or the black-and-white film reels of your aunt wheeling around on her tricycle with cousins racing around in the background at your grandparents’ house. The best part is the memories and stories these conjure up from your parents and grandparents while they go through these with you — the family anecdotes that reveal all the personalities, the quirks and challenges that make up your family’s history.
How family stories sustain us
In my last post, I touched on one of my most valuable possessions, the letter my grandad sent my father from the front lines of World War II. But beyond just the benefits of feeling closer to my dad and connected to the past, researchers have actually found learning family history and stories can have a positive impact on children’s mental health and resilience. Psychologists Marshall Duke and Robyn Fivush of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia conducted research showing that children who have a strong sense of their “family narrative” have better emotional health. Not only that, the more the children knew about their family history, the stronger their sense of control they felt over their lives, and their self-esteem was higher too.
“Hearing these stories gave the children a sense of their history and a strong ‘intergenerational self’. Even if they were only nine, their identity stretched back 100 years, giving them connection, strength and resilience,” Duke said in an interview with The Guardian.
“In times of great stress, stories sustain us,” says Fivush, director of the Family Narratives Lab in Emory’s Department of Psychology. “When we don’t know what to do, we look for stories about how people have coped in the past,” she says.
This has been evident most recently during the hardships of the pandemic over the past 12 months, as many people in the UK have drawn strength and inspiration from looking back at how the nation banded together during World War II. The Queen gave a national address promising there were better days ahead ending with the lyrics in the Vera Lynn wartime song “We will meet again”. Captain Sir Tom Moore, who had served in World War II, became a national hero after raising £30 million for charity by walking 100 laps in his garden before his hundredth birthday. And though for many of us, admittedly, our sacrifices would never match what our parents and grandparents faced during the wartime, there was a sense of pride and comfort from knowing the nation had been through worse and come out stronger on the other side.
We know what kind of stories and family legends have inspired us, but in the course of our everyday life, are we stopping to think about what kind of legacy and family stories we are leaving for our children and our children’s children? Surely latte art and airplane window selfies on Instagram aren’t going to cut it.
Leave an inheritance that is priceless: Future Messages
That’s the question I had when my co-founder Matt Blom and I set out to create Kin. It all started when I came across the poem ‘A Little Fellow Follows Me’ which reminded me of my 2 2/1-year-old son. I wanted to send him a note that he could read when he was older with the poem and how it beautifully summed up my feelings on fatherhood. I started a Yahoo email account for him, but it didn’t seem sufficient, so I called up Matt and asked “Surely there’s an app for sending messages in the future, right?” When we discovered that need was underserved and current solutions were clunky, Kin was born.
What initially started as a way to send Future Messages, grew into a wider purpose of serving as a digital home for loved ones to share the moments and things that matter. It started with the functionality to send a text, photo or video message to a family member to unlock on the date of your choice — whether that’s your son’s 18th birthday or your parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. Kin’s Future Messages feature gives you an easy, streamlined way to send a video, text or photo message at the moment you feel inspired and send it off to be revealed at the optimal moment in the future.
Create moments that future generations can experience, not just memories
Record a message for your future child the day you discover you are pregnant capturing the excitement you felt. Make a video for your son every year on his birthday recalling all your favourite memories from that year for him to open when he’s an adult. Have Nana and Papa record the story of how they met and their best marriage advice. Or a sweet video of them dancing together. Your aunt could video herself cooking her special Christmas turkey recipe for future generations to learn. You could show future grandkids how to tune up a bike or fix a leaky tap. Gather the whole family to make a video time capsule of what life is like during the pandemic and send it off 50 years into the future when coronavirus will be a distant memory. Wouldn’t it be comforting as a nervous new mum to open a video of your mum telling you all the times she messed up like when she almost lost you at the store or found you putting coins up your nose? Or what about making a video with you and your toddler laughing about something to show your daughter how much fun you used to have together when she’s a teenager?
With Kin’s simple interface and Future Messages capability, you can build up a treasure trove of stories, anecdotes and snippets from your everyday life that your loved ones will treasure in the future. And because Kin is a private, invite-only app, you don’t ever have to worry about your private messages being shared with advertisers or your data being up for sale.
Our relationships with loved ones is no longer limited to the here & now
If you could leave messages, stories, thoughts and feelings or even just aspects of your personality for your children or their children, in the future — why wouldn’t you? Imagine if you could hear the advice, stories and observations a grandparent or ancestor left specifically for you, or your generation, what emotions might that evoke? It’s all possible with Kin.
For her 40th birthday, Kim Kardashian famously received a present commissioned by her husband of a hologram of her deceased father wishing her a happy birthday and reflecting on how proud he was of her. No matter what your feelings about the Kardashian family, it says something when for a woman worth $780 million, the most priceless gift for her to receive was a message from her father.
