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Are Your Apps Making You Happy?

Did you know that Oprah has an app?  I mean, she has many apps, but that she has a game?  It’s called Bold Moves, and it’s a match-3 AND word game at the same time.  I linked to that tutorial on the Oprah site so you can see that it’s so pretty.  Plus, you get inspirational quotes to boot.  I am in love.

I’ve been trying to make an effort to judge every new app I download and then delete or keep depending on whether it’s making me happy after three days.  Bold Moves stays; it’s making me happy.  Unfortunately, a certain brain training app (starts with an L…) got the boot because it wasn’t doing anything good for my brain or mood.

The Center for Humane Technology did a survey of popular apps to determine the ones that consistently make people happy or unhappy.  Calm wins “happiest app.”  I agree.  I like Calm very much.  I use 9 out of the top 15, and I wholeheartedly agree that many remain on my phone because they bring happy into my life.

But then I went to the other side of the list — the unhappy side — and I was astonished.  Candy Crush makes people unhappy?  I love Candy Crush.  Facebook?  I mean… yeah… I could see Facebook making people unhappy but… MyFitnessPal makes people happy but Facebook makes people unhappy?  MyFitnessPal makes me feel guilty.

The study is really interesting because it breaks down the amount of time you can spend on an app to move from happy to unhappy.  Like people who use Netflix for 40 minutes (about one show) are happy.  People who use Netflix for 80+ minutes (multiple shows) are unhappy.

My happiest apps?  Smiling Mind, Desert Golfing, Solitaire, New York Times mini crossword, and Farm Heroes.  But there are like a dozen others that would make me really unhappy to lose.

What are your happiest apps?

6 comments

1 a { 03.21.18 at 9:58 am }

My Axis360 (library e-book) app makes me happy!

2 Sharon { 03.21.18 at 1:05 pm }

My happiest apps: LittleHoots, Kindle for iPhone, Simply Being, PokemonGo and Gratitude. I downloaded the free version of Calm but haven’t used it yet.

3 Alexicographer { 03.21.18 at 2:02 pm }

Kindle, and OurGroceries, the latter b/c it facilitates both remembering to buy stuff and coordinating with the hubby on ditto. I’m mostly not an app user (games, social media) b/c of a combination of privacy concerns and lack of interest — I don’t, for example, have FB or Twitter on my phone (I do use them on my computer). The only game (?) I have is a Madlibs app, and that’s there for my kid.

4 torthuil { 03.21.18 at 2:56 pm }

Blog touch pro is making me happy as it is now much easier to write my ideas down! Weather app doesn’t always make me happy but it’s saying today that there is mostly warm weather ahead so that’s good 😁

5 Leigh Ann Geiger { 03.21.18 at 4:13 pm }

My current happy app is Lake coloring book, on my iPad with the pole pencil that my husband got me because I was having surgery tomopen my Fallopian tubes this week. Love!

6 loribeth { 03.28.18 at 6:55 pm }

I don’t have a lot of apps beyond the usual ones that most people have. I don’t play a lot of games beyond Spider Solitaire. But I do have one app that I really don’t need but that provides me with some chuckles now & then — What the Forecast, which a friend recently introduced me to. You can adjust the profanity levels 😉 but keeping at least some keeps things interesting. 😉

(c) 2006 Melissa S. Ford
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