It’s Time to Relax: The Critical Importance of Digital Mental Health Products in the Context of Surveillance Capitalism

Abstract

There has been a huge increase in the use of digital technology throughout healthcare in recent years, with everything from apps to wearable tech. The mental health and wellbeing sector has been no exception. There are a wide variety of digital mental health apps available directly from app stores, making therapeutic techniques accessible for every smartphone user. The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing quarantines and lockdowns, followed by the current economic recession, have redefined the tech world's agenda. There has been an increased emphasis on mental wellbeing. Many of the well-known tech companies, whose core business is not even related to healthcare (such as Facebook, Telefonica, or Google) have invested in mental wellbeing, either through “moonshots” or by introducing new product segments. For their critics, this is a “do-good” gesture intended to detract attention from their data extraction processes. This leads us to question, what is it that these companies want to recommend to people through the use of mental wellbeing tech? What is the new set of values that they are promoting? In this article we critically analyse digital mental health products. We discuss how they might become a political tool, speculate on their side effects, and investigate outcomes of their increasing popularity. We want to move beyond the personal data privacy debate and tackle other potential issues – what does this data sharing mean in terms of a shift in collective psychology and ideologies? What is the potential for them to become political tools? Is this a step towards human and non-human convergence?