The hottest wellness apps – WWD

Gen Z was born into the digital world, so it stands to reason that the way they approach wellness transcends traditional frameworks and options and turns to the tech realm. And currently, many of these alternatives can be found in innovative health and wellness applications that harness their penchant for community, games, and virtual interactions.

“Any service Gen Z seeks to receive, the digital space would be 100% in this pipeline of potential options,” said Sinéad Bovell, futurist and founder of Waye. “In fact, they’re more likely to go first for something that’s purely in the physical world.”

According to App Annie, the mobile data and analytics company, a recent study found that 98% of Gen Z consumers own a smartphone, on average receiving their first by age 10. Gen Z spends 4.1 hours per app per month on the top 25 apps. , excluding games.

Whatever the activity, Gen Z is just as likely to turn to their phone to handle it. Take the health issues. Young people are as likely to turn to their phones as they are to the nearest emergency care when questions arise. “The data around Gen Z preferring telehealth hovers around 40%,” Bovell said. “Gen Z, in particular, when it comes to telehealth and wellness, not only are opting for these channels digitally, but also considering receiving care.”

Self-guided mental health tools are also a staple of Gen Z’s toolkit. According to YPulse, a Gen Z and Millennial research and analysis company, one in three young people have tried an app for mindfulness and mediation smartphone over the past year to combat stress and anxiety, and a third are interested in trying one.

“Gen Z is generally early on when it comes to the wellness and beauty categories,” said Lucie Greene, trend forecaster and founder of Light Years, who cited the Clementine hypnotherapy app as being particularly in resonates with young users given its mental focus. and emotional health. “We are also seeing media platforms that cater to Generation Z trying to use technology to open up therapies and make them more democratic and accessible,” Greene said.

To this end, UK-based Clementine aims to treat sleep, self-esteem and anxiety issues through hypnotherapy, allowing the user to quickly enter a trance state to relax the mind. “The hypnotherapist may ask you to think of a time when something happened or a situation,” said Kim Palmer, founder of Clementine. “The therapy is personalized because we bring it all back to you.

Fifteen percent of Clementine users are Gen Z, and Palmer noted that the cohort is willing to spend the money because the app is content-driven. (Currently, subscriptions cost £ 9 per month or £ 40 for the year.) “They’ll pay if they can see the benefits,” Palmer said. “Clementine offers instant gratification, which Gen Z expects.”

Meanwhile, apps like Wellory and Levels are also taking a digital approach to health and wellness. And while their Gen Z user count is low, there is huge potential for growth as the two personalization factors, which Greene says are very important to the demographics.

Wellory, an anti-diet and nutrition app, connects consumers with a virtual nutritionist. The application brings together nearly a thousand certified nutritionists, dieticians and health coaches. “We tailor each program to each individual to help them achieve their goal,” said Emily Hochman, Founder and CEO. “About 65% of our clients focus on weight loss and 35% of our clients focus on improving their energy, sleep and well-being through the power of healthy eating.” Wellory tracks a user’s meal with a food photo diary, and a nutritionist responds with feedback, comments, and suggestions. The app includes one-month subscriptions, $ 49.99; three months, $ 129.99 and six months, $ 209.99.

Levels, on the other hand, track a user’s blood sugar levels in real time to maximize diet and exercise. After a brief questionnaire, reviewed by a doctor, a prescription for a continuous glucometer is issued and a pharmacy sends two sensors. Each is worn for 14 days, and the Levels app takes a continuous flow of data and turns it into actionable insights to help the user understand what’s going on.

“It’s incredibly difficult to get a handle on things like metabolic health,” said Dr. Casey Means, co-founder and chief medical officer of Levels. “We believe that people should be able to own their health data and have access to information on how food affects them. Levels is still in a closed beta program and approximately 13,000 people have completed the program with a waiting list of approximately 130,000 people.

“Gen Z is fueling this idea in all of their digital interactions with the community and messaging as a key element,” said Greene. “When it comes to something like their health, self-monitoring is something there is no point in doing if there is no substance.”

Levels has made interacting with app users a priority with a feature called compare. “The community’s perspective on glucose is something people can choose from if they want to gain community support and be able to learn information from others,” Means said.

Open, a mindfulness app featuring meditation, breathing, music, and movement, also has a community element. Open allows members to invite a friend to a class. “We are seeing more and more people getting involved,” said Raed Khawaja, co-founder and CEO. “People use the chatbox a lot in movement classes. They provide live music commentary or greet each other from around the world. Often there is an interaction where the teacher invites the class to share an intention or provide an answer. There’s also the option to turn on your camera, so you can see who you’re training with.

Currently, the app is testing options where you leave a practice and enter an audio chat room with the person you trained or invited to. “Anxiety, stress, depression and loneliness are having a pretty big impact on Generation Z,” Khawaja said. “So we are definitely seeing them migrate to platforms like ours. “

It is important to recognize that the pandemic has brought about a new health cohort, especially with the lack of access to traditional physicians and forced telehealth. Katara McCarty, founder and CEO of Katecha Corp., was looking for apps to manage her stress and anxiety and she could feel the collective grief and trauma of the black community. The life coach and speaker prescribed wellness resources for her clients and found that the apps she was using were disconnected from who she was as a black woman. McCarty therefore created Exhale to provide resources to help manage and reduce the impact and effects of systemic racism on black and brown women of color. “We have meditation, breathing techniques, guided visualizations and daily affirmations, everything that hits the user’s phone on a daily basis,” she said. “The topic resonates with a larger group than Gen Z, but we see Gen Z using it.”

Exhale is currently free, but when creating Exhale 2.0, McCarty will add a pay-per-view model where users can choose their subscription. “Behind the paywall, we plan to create a video option where you can see someone and meditate with them,” McCarty said. “In addition, we want to provide a telehealth component so that our users can connect with a coach or therapist if they want to go further in their wellness and mental health journey than what our resources offer. “

The well-being and gamification combo is also becoming more and more popular. For example, Revery, which is in beta, is designed to make wellness affordable and accessible through gaming. The goal is to get users to play short gaming sessions over a long period of time. time. It focuses on mental health, starting with sleep, and takes advantage of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia.

“Gen Z are drawn to the gamification of many services because it’s part of the world they were born into,” Bovell said. “It’s even hard for them to think of a world that was pre-smartphones.”

Another example of health and gambling juxtaposed is Be a Looper, a daily mental health review and peer support app to keep users “in the know” with up to five people around the world. It claims to play an important role in the self-management of chronic diseases and in reducing the suicide rate. Each user receives a notification at 4 p.m. inviting them to register.

“Our evidence-based approach incorporates the principles of neuroscience developed by my co-founder, psychologist and neuroscientist, Roy Sugarman,” said Amanda Johnstone, founding CEO of Transhuman Inc. “We then organized these principles with these lived experiences alongside experts in gamification, security, applications and semantics and the advice and guidance of the public health mental health campaign RU OK? We have relied on popular mobile interactions including touch, touch, swipe, scroll and reveal (think Candy Crush, Snapchat, and Tinder). We used research shared by game companies on user retention, colors, and stickiness, and hired the people behind their development to help create .

According to Bovell, the gamification framework is what Gen Z is used to and, as a result, they develop an immediate sense of trust and security. “Generation Z is a culturally progressive generation,” she said. “And because they’re online, they’re constantly exposed to information trauma, trauma that other generations weren’t exposed to growing up. They are therefore focusing more on the tools and solutions to support them.

Screen savers

Innovative applications in the wellness area.

Be a curler: This daily mental health check-up combines health and play to create global peer support networks.

Clementine: Pre-recorded hypnotherapy sessions help clients fight anxiety, depression and sleep problems.

Exhale: Founder Katara McCarty focuses on reducing the impact of systemic racism on black people through meditation, breathing and more.

Levels: Levels track a user’s blood sugar levels in real time, allowing users to maximize their diet and exercise.

Wellory: The “Anti-Diet” Nutrition App connects customers with registered nutritionists, dieticians and health coaches for a 360-degree approach to healthy eating.