A few months ago, an app named Calm managed to hit a $250 million valuation after a new funding round. One of the investors is a company set up by Hollywood's Ashton Kutcher.
But Calm is just a "mindfulness" app to promote mental health, so why is it so popular?
It doesn't make sense that an app essentially for meditating and disconnecting from the technology in your life would spawn investors from the tech industry. It's not the only one of its kind to gain popularity in Silicon Valley either. So what gives? Have they all lost their collective minds?
You see, the tech industry right now is actually focused on disconnecting from tech. It's not that they've gotten tired of giving people more of what earns their revenue, they just give what people are asking for. Will people wanting to detox from tech harm their business? Eh, maybe, but they're not too worried about it right now. They'd prefer to give users what they're looking for at this moment.
Think about it. You're probably facing a computer at work all day, you check your phone every waking moment for something or the other, you're glued to your social media updates, and you probably also stream some show or movie when you're free at home. To put it bluntly, tech has you by the family jewels, and that's the way you like it.
That's why the general user trend right now is to detach from what's become an over-reliance on technology. People have started to figure out that too much tech is bad for you, whether it's something as simple as eye strain or a regular loss of sleep, or complex as depression caused by online abuse or social media addiction. Scientists have proven how common these issues are with their studies, and the media has brought it to the fore. We know we have a problem.
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As such, a large number of otherwise everyday users are now paying more attention to their screen time, trying to cut down their hours staring at displays everywhere. Because of this, companies are getting with the program too. Google and Apple both have features to show your device usage time and metrics, as well as to help you cut down by yourself. Facebook (and by extension Instagram) also introduced a feature to gauge your unhealthy screen peeking.
Which is great. Using our devices less will make us healthy all around. But there's more than just our physical and mental health at stake here. Instead, thanks to our technology addiction, we're gambling with our very future.
Consider the current state of the industry. We're on the cusp of developing immersive virtual reality, advanced artificial intelligence, and fully automating our offices, factories, and cars. With those latter two, we're making large swathes of our working population obsolete. We can't help that, it's the price of progress. But there's a big difference here.
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When the machine revolution was underway, thousands of railroad, mill, and factory workers found themselves out of a job, replaced by something faster, cheaper, and more efficient than they. We're facing the same sort of professional exodus here. The difference is, we've come to rely on technology so much, it's questionable whether we're even capable of reinventing ourselves.
We rely on our devices to perform everyday tasks, remember what we need to get done, even to help us with mundane things we should be able to do ourselves, like split a restaurant bill. Heck, we don't even talk to people most of the time, instead sending texts and emoji all day.
Our creativity is always plugged in for social media, so we're unknowingly training ourselves to use it only in that narrow fashion. Our memory, problem solving ability, all of it is just wasting away for most of us. And when a lot of our jobs are commandeered by hunks of metal and code, we're going to be floundering.
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Stop for a moment now, and go back to the first two paragraphs of this story. Read that again. We want to stop relying so much on technology and become the best we can be, and we're still using tech to do it.
Irony, thy name is "Wellness apps".
Well, it's a start anyway right?