There is no doubt that people spend a lot of time on their cell phones. Everywhere you go, you will be people of all ages with their eyes on their phones. For some, the obsession has become more of an addiction where they are unable to tear themselves away from their screen, and if they leave their home and they happen to forget their phone, or the battery dies while they are out, it leads to severe anxiety and even withdrawal. At the start of the pandemic, the number of time people spent on their phones actually increased. The average time people were spending on social media increased from about 2 hours a day to over 5 and a half hours per day. After a long lockdown that included a national election and all the aftermath, there was a backlash with people turning away from social media. Social media fatigue was a real thing.
Even as people were physically separated, they were more connected than ever. Besides the increased social media usage, Zoom became an app that went from being an obscure competitor to Skype to a household name used by everyone from schools to doctor’s offices to practically every business in the world. Zoom became an overnight success.
While so many people saw being so connected and online for so many hours in the day as a negative, there were entrepreneurs and programmers out there looking to turn the tables by creating apps and services so people could use their screen time to improve their lives and relief the ever-mounting stress.
Apps were released that focused on meditation, stress relief, and connecting people to real-life therapists. New apps came out to help people identify what they were feeling, how they could help themselves, and how they could find the help they needed.
Talkspace is an app that bills itself as the most comprehensive and convenient way to take care of your mental health and wellness by offering online therapy sessions to individuals, teens, and couples across a wide range of specialties.
Other apps focused more on self-help to give people the tools they need to relax. Calm is an app whose goal is to help you to improve your health and happiness through meditation. Some goals people hope to achieve through Calm are improved sleep, reduced stress or anxiety, and improved focus.
The writers of these apps were able to recognize the trend of being hyper-connected and how it was causing an increase in people's stress and a negative impact on our mental health. You can turn the tide and turn the screentime to you use to improve your mood, your outlook, and your overall mental health.
Moodfit is an app designed to do just that. Voted the best overall Mental Health App for 2020 and 2021, Moodfit allows users to set customized daily goals and provides a basis for their daily mental health workout. The app includes a mood journal and a gratitude journal, helping you to recognize the common traps people fall into, such as overgeneralizing, personalizing, and having an “all or nothing” attitude. The app is rounded out with mental health assessments, meditations, and breathing exercises. You can track your sleep and even the medication you are taking to see which medications are helping and which aren’t.
Another service considered one of the best available is called Sanvello. Sanvello helps people with stress, anxiety, and depression with self-help, peer support, coaching, and therapy options.
One last app we would like to highlight is one that will help you feel better just by seeing the name of the app. Happify! Yep, you can happify your life with this site that centers on fun, but in a way that is scientifically proven to brighten your day and give you a happier outlook on life. The best part is that you don’t have to spend a lot of time seeing improvement. Completing a few weekly activities is enough for 86% of users to report positive results in two months.
The last two years have been difficult for all, and we all feel it one way or another. However, we can all turn the page and realize that our screen time doesn’t have to be negative or destructive. Besides the apps listed here, there are so many apps out there to designed to improve our mood, outlook, and overall mental health.
We hope that you are doing well and continue to do so. If you begin to stumble or just want to increase your happiness levels and improve your life, take advantage of the apps designed to allow you to take a step back, take a deep breath and enjoy life again.