“we’re here for you”, and other creepy things my apps tell me
During dinner this evening, I received a notification. It read as follows.
I have been sent many a notification by the Headspace app in the past few months. I downloaded the app several months ago, both when I found it difficult to focus and maintain a consistent mood day-to-day. Notifications have ranged from cerebral quotes to general truisms, though none have felt quite as personal — and indeed, invasive, as this quote.
I don’t mind someone telling me that they are here for me. In fact, I would love to hear it more, but I understand one facet of adulthood is that your friends get busy with their own lives, and become more preoccupied with maintaining their own sanity than maintaining yours. What bothers me is an app telling me they care for me and my mental health, but only when that mental health is tied to an $95.88 USD/year subscription plan.
Something about the whole thing feels so very transactional, and even more isolating when I know that this notification is hard-coded — there is some algorithm in the Headspace codebase that says “If user has not opened app in 180 days and has not opened app after push notifications ABC have been sent, send this notification.” If I don’t open the app now, they will send me another one in two weeks’ time, maybe something even more prodding this time: “Don’t worry, your parents are actually proud of you! Your boyfriend isn’t looking at other girls on Instagram! And also, did you know we have a new food meditation?”
There is no Australian yogi checking in to make sure I’m okay — just the work of several devs, following a schedule, likely sending many users around the world the same notification as me.
I’m torn. I do want mental support. I want someone to tell me that it’s all going to be okay. But I feel more empty when I know I’m not the only one, when the message isn’t customized, and when I know the app doesn’t care how I feel after the meditation, only that I’ve done it.
I suppose there are two obvious solutions to this. The first is that I could get a therapist or psychologist. However, as any U of T student knows, getting a longer than 20-minute session with a psychologist is close to an impossibility, and the heartbreak and frustration associated with a 6-month waitlist is not something I’m willing to endure again. I could pay for a psychologist; except, I really can’t.
The second option, which, I’m sure, someone will someday build an app for, is to have more personalized mental health apps. The current state of meditation/mental health apps revolve around a base subscription model, through which users can gain access to a catalogue of resources. This catalogue is periodically updated, with more chapters and topics added as time goes on. The personalization features tend to revolve around ‘completion’ — aka: sitting through a 10 minute meditation session without stopping, or meditation for 10 days in a row. Achievements.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure how great achievements are as a business model, if the goal is truly to help people improve their mental health. I have often found some meditations to be simply ineffective for me midway through — when trying to close them, I am often given some kind of reprimand. “You will not receive credit if you close this meditation early.” I’m not sure why I should be punished for exiting a session that I paid for and that I feel is ineffective; but evidently the achievement algorithm thinks I should.
Additionally, I’m not sure how I feel about the strongly suggested notion that I need to meditate deeply every day. I’m sure for some users, daily meditation is helpful — but I think universally applying that schedule to everyone can be discouraging. If I find that my life doesn’t permit enough alone time to complete a 20-minute meditation, the last thing I want is a notification telling me that I’ve failed to achieve that — especially when I’m using the app to improve my mood in the first place, and to learn to cope with feelings of failure.
I’m not trying to shit on Headspace. I think what their team created was important. North American culture heavily values consistent productivity, but for many people, that simply isn’t a reality. Most people experience highs and lows, periods of excellent work and periods of shit. An easily accessible (or, as accessible as 95.88$/yr is to you; thankfully a previous employer of mine expensed mine) app seems like a good first way to remedy that.
I understand, as well, that in order for that team to be profitable, they need a sales team. That sales team needs to ensure subscribers keep subscribing (in essence, telling users to become reliant on their service as a daily need) and also, that skeptical first-time users will continue to test and use the service until they see it as a daily need. They can do this by giving lots of achievements at first — “first meditation” “10 minutes completed” “3 days in a row”, and getting them attached to these rewarding feelings. This might sound kind of like creating an addiction — but, pretty much every subscription service is (even the free ones).
And maybe this is why I resent that particular notification. Calling me by my first name, telling me that Headspace is there for me, makes me feel like it’s a friend talking to me. But it’s not. Headspace has no idea what my mental health goals or challenges are. It doesn’t know that I’ve already tried its service and found it ineffective. All it knows is that I’ve done three incomplete sessions and have failed a meditation streak.
The gamification of apps is an important thing we need to discuss as technology improves, and particularly as technology starts to replace previously in-person services, like therapy. Like how Farmville (oh Farmville) used to let you harvest your crops daily, or Neopets forced you to feed your virtual pets daily, Headspace gives you little smiley faces and encouragement for opening its app daily. These rewards are a fundamental part of their business model.
But, I think the ‘reward’ of mental health is just that — mental health. Feeling okay when you wake up. Some days I feel just that — like I’m okay, and that I don’t need to meditate that day. I’m proud of my ability to identify when I am and am not okay, but I often feel like I am pulled a step back when my apps don’t agree with me. I am only okay unless I have checked into Headspace first. It is then when I feel like the app is more concerned with its business model than with me.
Headspace should not be Farmville — I’m not collecting points. I’m trying to strengthen and improve my mind, and the audiences for both apps are fundamentally different. Just because app features are common in one group does not make them necessarily appropriate for another.
There is no app for free that will make you feel better. Holy shit, I wish there was though. Not even because I’m a semi-broke university student, but because there is significant evidence to suggest that impoverished individuals suffer from worse mental health, and that these two can be causationally cyclical. Poor mental health leads to poor financial decisions leads to poor mental health. The tech industry should do more to address this, particularly because technology can be distributed so cheaply — but so often, is not.
I know Headspace has investors. Their investors will be happy to know that people stay subscribed for longer. They couldn’t give a shit if I left a review saying: “Thanks for everything! This meditation really helped. I’ll be unsubscribing now that I feel better.” I would just be a lost user.
I believe it is possible to create apps that are empathetic, helpful, and flexible for people suffering from mental health issues — that are also accessible, affordable, and do not pressure people to stay on a schedule or a curriculum. I just don’t know what it looks like yet.
on a positive note
One app that I used in the last year is called Mend. If you search it up, you will see that it is an app for people who have gone through breakups. I used it in the midst of such one — laugh it up — but I did feel at the time that my breakup was unbearable and was starting to impact my daily life significantly. I listened to a disembodied voice telling me everything was going to be okay — similar to Headspace — with a gentle reminder that the full program was going to cost me money. Groan. I had no job at the time, and couldn’t justify to myself why this was worth sacrificing part of my grocery bill.
The app did come with some free resources, however. Blog posts and comments by other users going through similar things. I found their words tremendously comforting and relatable. I screenshotted many of them. One of the quotes became my phone background. I looked at it each morning to remind myself that no matter what thoughts I had about the breakup that day, that my day was going to still happen regardless. I gritted me teeth through tearful nights until I found myself able to sleep soundly again.
It did not require me to login daily*, though did give me an option to journal freely if I wished. I ended up logging in daily anyways, journaling as I needed.
I read through those free posts for months afterwards. These features soothed me in the really unbearable moments, until gradually, I broke away entirely. It was a painless transition, and a year later, I deleted the app. There was no fanfare — certainly no, ‘We’re sorry to see you go’. I felt that the app had done exactly as it and its founder promised; that I would feel better and my life would move on.
I remain subscribed to its newsletter. I’ve recommended the app to friends. I can’t speak highly of it enough. It won my loyalty by giving me what I needed to heal — instead of holding all resources just out of reach until I coughed up a credit card. It allowed users to contribute free content, which I found touching on the part of its devs. They seemed to understand that, yes, they needed to make money — but also, their user base needed to feel better. People of all income levels get heartbroken.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to build technical tools that matter. I decided to forgo my previous humanities and social science interests, mostly because I found them overwhelmingly ineffective. A lot of talk and discussion and marketing campaigns about things we should do, without legitimately changing people’s lives. I’ve been moved by the technology industry, and my short time in it, and how its products seem to affect people quickly and democratically, opening access to things where doors were previously closed.
I am not a mental health advocate — just someone who has been on antidepressants, really, and someone who tries to look after themselves decently enough. I am not here to criticize people who work in mental health, as if their work to date isn’t enough, or to shit on the devs who build apps like this. If anything, I would like to find ways to make technology a real friend, rather than a fake one, and find ways to humanize features that genuinely improve quality of life, rather than maximizing usage. I hope someday I will get to help build it.
*to be fair, I can’t remember if it asked me to login daily. But the fact that I can’t remember probably says something about how uninvasive it was in my daily life.
thank you for reading my blog! i’m kristen, an economics student with a passion for technology and social issues. would love to hear your thoughts below!
