{"id":28743,"date":"2025-04-07T12:39:50","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T20:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.spokeo.com\/compass\/?p=28743"},"modified":"2025-12-04T12:30:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T20:30:20","slug":"spring-2017-spokeo-scholarship-winner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spokeo.com\/compass\/spring-2017-spokeo-scholarship-winner\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Kind of Connection: Dan Krajewski Wins Spring 2017 Spokeo Scholarship"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>For <strong>Dan Krajewski<\/strong>, a psychology student at Arizona State University, technology isn\u2019t just a tool for convenience\u2014it\u2019s a potential bridge to empathy. As someone who enjoys fiction writing, baking, and music, Dan brings a thoughtful and creative approach to the way people interact with the world around them. Now a junior working toward a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, he hopes to build a career in healthcare or neuropsychological research.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"204\" height=\"202\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.spokeo.com\/compass\/image\/Screenshot-2025-09-30-at-1.40.22-PM.png?resize=204%2C202&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-28744\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.spokeo.com\/compass\/image\/Screenshot-2025-09-30-at-1.40.22-PM.png?w=204&amp;ssl=1 204w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.spokeo.com\/compass\/image\/Screenshot-2025-09-30-at-1.40.22-PM.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 204px) 100vw, 204px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>His winning entry for the <strong>Spring 2017 Spokeo Scholarship<\/strong> stood out for its emotional intelligence and originality. Instead of critiquing social media from the outside, Dan offered a solution: a conceptual app called DropSecret, designed to foster anonymous, meaningful exchanges between strangers. In an age where social feeds are often filtered and performative, his vision embraces honesty, vulnerability, and compassion\u2014one message at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read Dan\u2019s full essay below, and see why he was selected as our 2017 Spring scholarship winner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Imagine you\u2019re walking down the street to meet a friend for a bite to eat.\u00a0 As you pass by a public park, a ping from your phone lets you know you\u2019ve gotten a notification\u2014you pull it out and see the message:\u00a0 \u201cMy grandfather died today in the hospital.\u00a0 I was too scared to visit and say goodbye.\u201d\u00a0 You meditate soberly on it as you continue your walk.\u00a0 You get your bite to eat, chat about video games, have a beer or two, and start walking home.\u00a0 As you cross that same park, you type a message of your own:\u00a0 \u201cMy grandpa died too, a few years ago.\u00a0 Tell him goodbye today, just for yourself.\u00a0 Everything will be ok.\u201d\u00a0 You punctuate it with two emoji:\u00a0 a safe, and a heart.\u00a0 Later that day, the person who wrote the original message reads yours and smiles a tiny smile through her tears.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>The app is called DropSecret\u2014users leave anonymous messages in public places that are too scary or intimate to say in person, but they feel an important need to express.\u00a0 Other users pick up on these texts like messages in bottles across the ocean, and can reply with replies of their own, supportive, thoughtful, invitational, or just commiserating.\u00a0 It\u2019s asynchronous, anonymous group therapy, or a cross between a secret santa game and a virtual pen pal.\u00a0 The app is 100% secure, and it\u2019s almost the inverse of social media.\u00a0 There are no likes, no photos, and no shares allowed.\u00a0 If a connection is formed, just as in the fictional anecdote that opened this essay, then the two users can continue to message each other at length, just like real pen pals of the old-school variety, sharing only as much information as they choose with each other alone via the secure message app.\u00a0 Only the minimalist forms of text apply\u2014just words and a handful of emoji.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>I came up with this idea because I\u2019m a student of psychology, and the more I learn the more I\u2019ve come to believe that social media is an accelerating filter bubble, where powerful emotional connections are less and less easy to come by in favor of popularity contests and political soapboxes where no one\u2019s really listening to each other.\u00a0 My hope with this idea is to allow deeper connections underneath the superficial aspects of our online identities, and maybe make people feel a little less alone in the world today.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For Dan Krajewski, a psychology student at Arizona State University, technology isn\u2019t just a tool for convenience\u2014it\u2019s a potential bridge to empathy. As someone who enjoys fiction writing, baking, and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":28911,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[640],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A New Kind of Connection: Dan Krajewski Wins Spring 2017 Spokeo Scholarship - The Compass Blog | Digital Identity and People Search | Spokeo<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.spokeo.com\/compass\/spring-2017-spokeo-scholarship-winner\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A New Kind of Connection: Dan Krajewski Wins Spring 2017 Spokeo Scholarship - The Compass Blog | Digital Identity and People Search | Spokeo\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For Dan Krajewski, a psychology student at Arizona State University, technology isn\u2019t just a tool for convenience\u2014it\u2019s a potential bridge to empathy. 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