These days, you can’t go any­where with­out hear­ing about how tech­nol­o­gy is ruin­ing every­thing, includ­ing our hap­pi­ness. There is some truth to this, but it’s not the whole sto­ry.

Tech­nol­o­gy can be bad for us—for exam­ple, when social media gives us FOMO (fear of miss­ing out) or traps us in fil­ter bub­bles that pre­vent us from see­ing mul­ti­ple points of view on impor­tant issues. As a soci­ety, we are increas­ing­ly con­cerned that tech­nolo­gies like smart­phones and social media result in more social com­par­i­son, bul­ly­ing, and loneliness—all stum­bling blocks to hap­pi­ness. Tech­nol­o­gy seems to be bad for our hap­pi­ness when it inter­feres with the men­tal, social, emo­tion­al, and behav­ioral process­es that con­tribute to well-being.

But we often fail to real­ize (and dis­cuss) the ways that tech­nol­o­gy can also sup­port hap­pi­ness and well-being—for exam­ple Read the rest of this entry »

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Bay­er inks deals with eleven star­tups under G4A Dig­i­tal Health Part­ner­ships pro­gram (press release):

“Bay­er announced today that the com­pa­ny has signed col­lab­o­ra­tion agree­ments with eleven dig­i­tal health star­tups. As part of the pro­gram, Bay­er will sup­port these start­up com­pa­nies aim­ing for longer-term col­lab­o­ra­tions to dri­ve for­ward the devel­op­ment of spe­cif­ic dig­i­tal solu­tions to improve patients’ health Read the rest of this entry »

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Sleep Ther­a­py for the Mass­es May Be Com­ing to You Soon (The New York Times):

“CVS Health wants to help mil­lions of Amer­i­can work­ers improve their sleep. So for the first time, the big phar­ma­cy ben­e­fits man­ag­er is offer­ing a pure­ly dig­i­tal ther­a­py as a pos­si­ble employ­ee ben­e­fit.

The com­pa­ny is encour­ag­ing employ­ers to cov­er the costs for their work­ers to use Read the rest of this entry »

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Pear Ther­a­peu­tics’ dig­i­tal insom­nia ther­a­peu­tic will put FDA’s Pre­Cert frame­work through its paces (Mobi­Health­News):

“Pre­scrip­tion dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics com­pa­ny Pear Ther­a­peu­tics announced late last week that it has filed an FDA mar­ket­ing autho­riza­tion for Som­ryst, its dig­i­tal cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py for the treat­ment of adults with chron­ic insom­nia and depres­sion.

While an approval from the agency would mark the third autho­rized pre­scrip­tion dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic for Pear Read the rest of this entry »

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Last month, researchers from over 60 coun­tries gath­ered at the Inter­na­tion­al Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy Association’s 6th World Con­gress in Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia, to share cut­ting-edge insights on the sci­ence of well-being.

Sev­er­al insights pre­sent­ed stood out to me as new or sur­pris­ing. Read the rest of this entry »