Amid an increasingly polarized social and political climate in the United States, two BYU alumni created an app aimed at starting conversations and fostering understanding within families, college campuses and across the nation.
The app, Zytegyst, is in homage to the German phrase “zeitgeist,” which translates to “time spirit.” By definition, this phrase refers to “the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era,” according to Merriam-Webster.
The app's ultimate goal is to capture and break down a snapshot of that mood in America, through a variety of social and political topics.
“Zytegyst kind of started with this idea that our world appears to be quite divided, and I think the empirical evidence would also suggest that,” David Coppins, CEO of Zytegyst, said. “I’ve often kind of discovered that when you get down to actually talking with people, we’re maybe not so far apart. We kind of want the same things, ultimately, but how we get there is usually the path in which the conversation really starts to diverge.”
These sentiments came to the forefront for Brian Beitler, Coppins’ friend and Zytegyst co-creator, in March 2024. With the 2024 presidential election on the horizon, Beitler said his anxiety about the impending polarization inspired him to act.
Despite working with people from a variety of widely varying social and political backgrounds, Beitler characterized relationships with his associates as those of mutual respect and love.
“We might be divided in our perspectives, but we’re not that angry at each other when we’re individually together with someone we know and someone we respect. And, we can have very productive and thoughtful conversations about hard topics, and we listen to one another and learn,” he said.
While Beitler’s experiences led him to believe that there is more that unites Americans than separates them, he concluded that traditional media outlets and social media platforms exacerbated a problem he and Coppins wanted to solve.
“Right now the only source of sharing ideas is through social media, and those ideas have the tendency to kind of self-reinforce because once you’re in a path, you start to kind of get into your own bubble,” Coppins said.
To reach a broader share of viewpoints and create the understanding he was looking for, Beitler approached Coppins with the idea for Zytegyst. The two worked with an Argentinian development team, Toptive, to bring their vision to life.
Today, the app functions based on a simple concept. Users create a free, anonymous account and are asked to fill out a variety of in-depth demographic markers. Every day, all app members are asked the same, singular question about a current political, social or cultural event, controversy or discussion. Users click either “yes” or “no” and are asked to fill out a text box briefly explaining their reasoning, according to the app's official website.
Using generative AI, the app collects the answers from all members and breaks them down into manageable statistics that can be filtered by demographic. AI also summarizes the key arguments from each side, filtering out emotional language and finding common ground among opinion holders.
The app also allows members to predict how the majority of app users will respond and awards them with different level titles based on their correct guessing streaks, Beitler said.
Users can navigate the app to filter results by age range, race and ethnicity, household income, gender, sexual orientation, political affiliation and more. Individuals can also enroll in a premium membership and create their own sub-groups, or “bubbles,” with personalized questions for family, friends, the workplace and recreational clubs. All results are always anonymous, even to app moderators and developers, Coppins said.
“The anonymity then also brings the ability for us to really get people’s real feelings and real understandings about different topics, and that’s where the excitement I have for this comes in,” Coppins said.
With a soft launch underway, Coppins and Beitler invited their friends and family to test-run Zytegyst. Both men said incorporating Zytegyst into their family lives has had unexpected benefits.
“We have a lot to talk about,” Coppins said, speaking about the conversations he has with his wife. “The game part of it, the competitive part of it, is more fun for her … it becomes sort of a daily habit.”
Beitler said using Zytegyst with his extended and close family members has been an enlightening and humbling experience.
"This has opened the pathway to be able to learn from (my) children in a way that is exciting for me and better than what I thought it would be," he said. "I was hopeful it would do this with people around me, but it’s been valuable in our own family.”
In addition to test runs among their family members, Coppins and Beitler approached faculty on several university campuses, including those on the BYU campus, to create on-campus test groups for the app. While there has been only one BYU test group so far, Coppins and Beitler believe using Zytegyst in classrooms across America will help people of all ages better understand the current condition and trajectory of the American zeitgeist.
“If you look at the students and the people in our country who are the most open-minded and least cynical, it’s those who are in their university experience,” Beitler said.
Both Coppins and Beitler are BYU alumni, with Coppins receiving a bachelor’s in business management in 1992 and Beitler graduating with an MBA in 1998. Coppins and Beitler even have children who have attended and graduated from BYU.
Their friendship began when Coppins moved his family to Hingham, Massachusetts where he met Beitler, who was serving as bishop for the local congregation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Beitler said his time serving in an ecclesiastical position was a source of inspiration for Zytegyst.
“We have a lot of very liberal members of our faith in Hingham, we have very conservative, and at the end of the day this is all about finding common understanding and bringing people together, and helping all of our Father in Heaven’s children progress — and you don’t progress when you’re angry at each other,” Beitler said. “That’s just my feeling in general; anger and division are of the devil, we know that, and brotherhood and sisterhood and love are the things that our Father in Heaven believes.”
While his religious beliefs are a motivating factor behind the idea, Beitler emphasized that building bridges of understanding is for people of all affiliations, religious or otherwise.
“In a world that seems divided, we just wanted to find common ground. That’s the place where hearts warm and faith builds, and (it) seemed like there was space to be able to do that, and to do that in a way that would be commercial and matter to a lot of people, whether they were of our faith or not,” he said.
Those interested can download the initial version of the app by searching “Zytegyst” on Apple and Android app stores.