Wellness Apps Only Help You Get Unwell

Scientific and business explanations to why less people are downloading wellness apps.

In early 2020, I started meditating using Headspace—a habit I had never thought about doing until then. I likely did it because Naval, Tim Ferris, and Marcus Aurelius convinced me to. The relationship between Headspace and I lasted about eight months. I got cranky after losing my streak and didn't do it again. 

After some research, I found out I'm not alone. Most people quit these apps because of how the app works, not because they doubt the practice—i.e., meditating, eating mindfully, exercising—is valuable. According to Apptopia data, 64% fewer people are downloading these apps compared to January 2020—a period when COVID-19 existed but didn't yet affect every economy.

There are four reasons why fewer people are downloading wellness apps. Three explanations are scientific. The last one comes from my experience telling more than forty companies earning at least 7-figures how to make more money by publishing content on Google.

1. These apps don't always work

For an app to work, users must follow its directions. Apps can't light motivation; they can only add fuel to a spark that already exists. A valuable wellness app can go bankrupt if people don't use it enough to experience its benefits.

A study reviewing the latest evidence on the effectiveness of weight management apps shows people using these apps often lose motivation because they get bored. The reasons that motivate people to get these apps don't encourage them to keep using them. 

This problem gets worse because apps have too many features. In weight loss apps, you need to add the meals you ate, their calories, the time you ate them, etc. Mainly fitness professionals and enthusiasts like tracking these. As a result, people lose motivation, causing most individuals not to see changes in diet after using an exercise or diet tracking app after up to 24 months.

Meditation apps like Calm and Headspace do better. A meta-analysis—statistical analysis based on many studies' results—evaluating these apps' impact on mental health and well-being found people saw small or medium benefits from them. Test subjects perceived fewer symptoms of stress, depression, and dissatisfaction with life.

These are positive outcomes. Yet, other researchers and I haven't found studies on the long-term effects of these apps. So, meditation apps may not be helpful. People might see them as valuable because they are doing something to improve their mental health daily: a placebo effect could be taking place. People leaving these apps in 2022 could be 2020 users who realize their well-being and mental health haven't improved.

2. Limited scientific literature

Peer-reviewed research has found wellness apps often make unbacked claims. Users don't care so much about this. Otherwise, millions wouldn't use these apps. But an unscientific app trying to get precise results will lose clients at some point because people won't see change.

Commercial mobile apps for weight loss/management lack important evidence-based features, do not involve health care experts in their development process, and have not undergone rigorous scientific testing. Rivera et al.

Based on my research, I suspect many people quit these apps because they don't see results after exercising, meditating, or counting calories for a month. They don't have the patience to put in the work. 

But that's the company's problem. Wellness apps must study how to do an activity effectively based on science and learn psychological triggers that encourage people to do these actions for a long time. It's challenging to achieve the second goal if the arguments to support the importance of using these apps are opinions and not facts.

The lack of scientific support also affects these apps' Google rankings. Google estimates a page's value by seeing its E-A-T: Expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. If evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and I write about humanity's tendency to love pineapple pizza, his article will outrank mine. Google sees him as an expert on how humans work, not me.

E-A-T is more important in the wellness space than in other industries because people die when they follow the wrong advice. For example, in 2018, kids and teenagers ate detergent pods because of a social media trend. Hundreds lost their conscience, vomited, and couldn't breathe well. Without E-A-T, a satirical article telling people to eat these pods would have outranked the ones telling them not to. Thousands, if not millions of teenagers would have died.

Most wellness apps back some of their blog posts and claims with scientific research and experts. But they don't always do it. The result is that potential customers never see or trust what the app publishes online. Using the world's largest search engine analyzer, I found most wellness apps' blogs didn't even 2x the number of people they attracted to their blog. If you always lure the same number of potential customers but don't fix the lack of scientific arguments, new customers eventually leave.

I know that the number of website visitors doesn't equal the number of customers. So these apps might draw the same number of people but turn more of them into customers.

I also know businesses selling to consumers rely heavily on social media and ads to attract customers. So they might have prioritized these channels.

However, none of the apps I researched stopped publishing blog content. So, based on how Google's algorithm works, their decrease in customers partially has to do with their lack of scientific research.

3. Exacerbate eating and exercise disorders

Every popular wellness app aims to help people overcome a challenge, which doesn't mean they do it. Mahsa Honary and her colleagues studied the adverse effects of using fitness and eating apps. They reviewed 106 people's perceptions of these apps, finding around half of them formed negative behaviors after using these apps.

Surveyees felt controlled by the app and afraid of not hitting their goals. They also felt isolated. It's harder to go out with people if you focus on eating in a specific way. I know this feeling. At 18, I stopped eating dairy products and fast food to combat my hormonal acne. If my conviction to eat healthily wasn't strong enough, and most people's isn't, I would have eaten as usual.

Academics from the University of Louisville found a correlation between using My Fitness Pal—a dieting app—and eating disorders, like eating a lot and being terrified of weight changes.

The app's design might be to blame for these unintended problems. A qualitative study from Cambridge University Press found apps emphasizing numbers worsen eating disorders. For example, your motivation to eat well can vanish if you lose your 100-day streak app medal turns into a big, red zero because you ate one cookie.

A solution, they say, is to work with people with eating disorders while designing apps. Showing an "oh no, you are back to day one" pop-up to a person who eats poorly a single day can seem harmless. But it can crush the person's motivation and encourage them to binge.

4. Assume every person who knows the app will buy it

Most wellness apps that sell to consumers publish articles their audience will like instead of motivating them to sign up for a free trial. For example, MyFitnessPal published an article on how to make a mixed berry tart. It's a helpful article for some people that track calories, but it's also useful for anyone wanting to bake this recipe:

• Athletes.

• People who don't want to work out.

• People who don't need a calorie tracking app.

Most wellness apps overestimate writing content many people can like because they must sell to many people to be profitable. For example, Headspace's annual membership costs $69.99. So if one person could run it alone, they would need 144 monthly customers to earn 10.000 a month. 

Meanwhile, I've made 10.000 in one month from selling a single content strategy to one business. 

Lower prices make brands focus on getting more people instead of turning more of the existing ones into customers.

Going back to MyFitnessPal, the app would be better at turning readers into customers if it wrote about topics that only a person who would find the app useful would like. Their article on how an app user lost 65 pounds by tracking meals is excellent sales-focused content. People who read it want to test the value of tracking calories and want to learn how to do it. Once they see MyFitnessPal is a solution, they'll sign up for a trial.

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Many people know or feel a healthy mind and body are more beneficial than saving a few extra monthly dollars. Yet, people who choose to care for themselves can lose the motivation to be healthy if wellness apps are unhelpful or affect them emotionally. Using a meditation app is pointless if it causes more stress than peace of mind. 

Wellness apps can work. Their number of customers proves this, or at least confirms people think they can work, and that's enough validation. But we are yet to see whether most users see benefits in the short-term and long-term.