Last month, in a memo obtained by the New York Times, a Facebook executive said that the product is “probably like sugar.” “Sugar is delicious and for most of us there is a special place for it in our lives,” wrote Andrew “Boz” Bosworth. “But like all things it benefits from moderation.”
Concerns over the prevalence of added sugar in foods led to the rise of health food stores, gyms, and any number of other products from the 1960s until today. But equivalent concerns over social media have only recently bubbled to the surface, and the number of wellness-branded social apps is still fairly small.
There are certainly popular apps that seek to improve mental health, though they aren’t typically branded as such. (Think Calm or Headspace,…