My thoughts about these happiness apps are a little diverse. In one side I think they are might be good to collect data such as a person’s location where they live, their gender, ethnicity etc. and see how that affects their wellbeing. Meaning, if they have economic stability, enough resources provided by the government and so on. However, I also think that the apps are not enough for a person to reach happiness. Yes, it gives some tips of what can be done to feel better at the moment. Although, it doesn’t give you exact processes that would help you solve the problems that may be affecting your happiness. Here are some thoughts about some of the apps:
“Track your happiness” is the app that makes you take a survey at the beginning asking you about general information about yourself, like gender, ethnicity, age etc. then this app sends you surveys to your email where at the beginning of the day, the middle and at night. In each of these surveys there are about 15 questions that ask you what you are doing, how do you feel, etc. At the end of each survey this app collects the data and graphs it in correlation with your happiness and activities accordingly. I think this app is not so helpful to improve a person’s happiness but more like to collect information of how people’s happiness is affected by their environment and daily activities.
“Happy habits” is an app that you can download to your phone and this app contains a series of activities that you can do to increase your level of happiness at the moment. I first took the survey with 119 questions, which at the end gave me a detailed summary of what are my characteristics as a person and how i could improve in them to be happy. The summary about the characteristics measured them from low, average and high. The characteristics measured were: optimism, illness susceptibility, locus of control, compassion, trusting of others, affiliation, pleasantness, emotional stability, conscientiousness, assertiveness, self-confidence, gratefulness, approval seeking, and playfulness. Mines ended up being sort of accurate I would say, and the advice that they give is realistic. Asides from the test this app contains information that educates people about cognitive psychology, which is the approach the application takes. Moreover, they have meditation techniques and activities that are in fact relaxing and help improve happiness. I have tried meditation before and I can say that after it I would always end up relaxed and feeling fresh in mind and body.
Emotion sense app claimed that they were going to collect data from my phone including my location, texts, calls and more. When I read this, I immediately went back and did not agree to the terms and conditions. I already don’t trust facebook and some other websites that have my private information. I obviously wouldn’t like another app to get this private information from me. I would feel very uncomfortable with someone reading my messages or spying on my calls. Not that I have anything bad or embarrassing to hide but I just like the fact that I can keep some things to myself.
