Young people’s use of health apps put to the test
Tue Jan 12 2016 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
Young people’s use of health apps put to the test
12 January 2016
Andrea Merino Ortiz with some of the health apps she's researching.
Andrea Merino Ortiz is studying so many different health apps you would think she was a hypochondriac.
But instead she’s immersing herself in a University of Auckland Summer Scholarship.
Andrea, along with 35 other Faculty of Arts students, is spending her summer as a Summer Scholar. She will be working in Anthropology in the School of Social Sciences for Associate Professor Susanna Trnka’s research project called “Feeling sick? Go Online: Young people’s use of the internet and health apps for making sense of health and illness.”
She’s already been trying out some of the health apps available.
“I would take an afternoon, or an hour every day of the week, to try out an app – sometimes just using it while I was waiting for the bus, or sometimes using one an entire evening,” she says.
The apps have included general health and fitness apps, to meditation apps, to mood tracking apps, to panic attack apps, even period trackers.
The 24-year old from Auckland’s Mt Eden says each app had a very different effect on her.
“Sometimes an app would be very good, but it would stop if your phone’s screensaver turned off – and if this happened in the middle of a panic attack breathing meditation, well, you get the idea.”
“Others started out feeling very clunky and awkward, but later become extremely useful and enjoyable. This was the case of a diaphragmatic breathing exercise app, which made you place your phone on your stomach to help you slow down your breathing and relax,” she says.
“As you inhaled and exhaled, it would have the sound of waves that would synch with your breath, and these later on turned into self-composing instrumental music, which seemed to be orchestrated by your breath. In the beginning it felt very weird, but after a few minutes it was a delightful and extremely pleasant experience - I still use this app if I am having trouble getting to sleep. I would never have thought it would be so effective.”
Andrea will be assisting Dr Trnka to assess whether these apps create a “community of care” for the teenagers who use them, looking at how communication and identity are negotiated online. They are also interested in assessing the impact of app usage on youths’ health and esteem.
Andrea, who arrived in New Zealand from Mexico when she was 15, was drawn to the project after completing her BA majoring in Anthropology. She is now finishing her honours in anthropology. She had also completed a course called Anthropology of the Body (Anthro 241) that sparked her interest.
“This course ignited my interest in how the body and notions of health get conceptualised at different times in history; according to different cultural frameworks and in relation to social change.”
If you are interested in participating in this project, contact Andrea at amer052@aucklanduni.ac.nz.
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