I've tried meditating. It would be a good thing for me. I couldn't make the habit stick even though I tried. I didn't have the will to continue. There has been a decrease in the number of people using meditation apps over the past two years.
In the first half of 2020, user sessions at the top 10 meditation apps in the US peaked. We were dealing with the emergence of a global Pandemic that upended life around the world and fundamentally changed people's day-to-day routines. According to the report, usage has been decreasing. The number of sessions on the app went down. Headspace had a 60.3 percent decline over the same time period.
There are possibilities for why this trend is happening. There were soaring levels of stress and mental health challenges faced by people early in the Pandemic. People aren't at home for long stretches of time the same way they were at the start of the Pandemic and might have less time to meditate.
There have been some big changes in politics in the last few years. After Donald Trump became president, meditation app usage began to rise and then fell around the time Joe Biden became president. It is noted in the report that correlation is not cause and effect. We won't draw any conclusions from that particular trend, but it does raise an eyebrow.
There is a huge demand for mental health treatment in the US. It is hard for people to find affordable and accessible therapists for mental health services. Tech companies have begun to offer services that they say can fill the gap. Ginger and Talkspace are examples of companies that are marketing themselves as mental health solutions. New data shows that mental health apps aren't taking over as a long-term solution, even though they can.