tracking
What is tracking?
Tracking in mental health apps can take many different forms. There are tracking apps for your routine, activities, habits, and thoughts. One of the most popular forms of tracking is mood-tracking. Mood-tracking apps allow the user to note their real-time experiences and any health-related emotional occurrences.
By using day-to-day tracking, patterns can be found in a user’s life, providing insight into what actions are helpful or harmful to their well-being [16]. Studies have shown that mood-tracking can improve self-awareness, manage health, and keep a helpful record to look back on previous emotions and gain a better understanding of oneself [15].
"If you are more aware of your moods, you may be able to better manage your lifestyle, make informed decisions, prevent or avoid triggers, and work towards a better quality of life."
-MoodPanda
MoodPanda
MoodPanda is a free app designed to ‘monitor your mood’ and help move towards a happier mindset. They claim that understanding your moods can lead to better management of one’s lifestyle, prevent triggers, and improve decision-making [17]. By incorporating MoodPanda into your daily routine, it becomes easy to self-monitor emotions and catch dramatic mood changes. They also provide graphs and other visual aids to help see patterns in behavior.
One special aspect of MoodPanda is its community aspect where users can give and receive support. However, they claim to not be a social media app [16]. Reports can be shared anonymously with the intent of full honesty about expressing highs and lows. Many users appreciate reading mood descriptions of others as it makes them feel less alone [15].
"Journaling is a vehicle for self-understanding, self-guidance, expanded creativity, and spiritual development."
-Lynda J. Dimitroff [18]
journaling
What is journaling?
Journaling is a common feature associated with tracking apps. It is another way to track your mood, but with more detail. Sometimes called smart journaling, journaling through an app is a new way of creating a personal record [19]. There are many different versions of journaling: day-to-day, gratitude, creative, spiritual, emotional, and activity-based [18]. Techniques can take the form of full narrative entries or bullet journaling, essentially writing bulleted notes about your day. Many apps use a flexible combination of the two options. Journaling can have multiple motivations including accounting one’s life, reminiscing, the experience of writing, and creating a memory [19].
"Keep a diary and capture your day without writing down a single word!"
-Daylio
Daylio
Daylio is a journal, diary, and mood-tracker. They encourage daily entries and use streaks as motivation. As the user inputs more entries, Daylio compiles data into stats such as a mood chart, mood graph, activity count, average daily mood, and a mood stability score. One study found that Daylio’s statistical graphs are ideal for seeing visual trends in a user’s moods [15].
Their main feature is that a user can use their digital journal without ever writing a word. This is done through a variety of mood buttons and activity tags. All of the moods and tags are customizable for the user’s needs. It can be simple or complex, catering to whatever the user prefers. You can also set goals that you want to achieve. While the app is already customizable in the default (free) version, Daylio Premium (at $2.99 a month or $11.99 a year) provides even more customizations. Examples include more moods, a pin lock for privacy, automatic backups, and hundreds more icons and emojis.
"Your self-care and mental health should always be a priority."
-Reflectly
Reflectly
Relfectly is a journal and AI diary app. By using positive psychology, mindfulness, and cognitive behavioral therapy [21], Reflectly can help build a healthier and more positive mindset and improve self-care. It also develops healthy habits through a habit tracker. Reflectly claims to be like a best friend, where a user can share their thoughts and feelings [21]. Through daily entries, the app is said to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression and boost the user’s overall mood. It also provides personalized prompts and motivational sentiments to encourage consistency. Like other journaling apps, Reflectly also creates mood graphs and correlations.
While Reflectly does provide a free service, the basic plan prohibits access to some of the app's additional features such as daily reflection questions, tracking statistics, and motivational quotes. For the premium version, Reflectly costs $59.99 a year.
"Keeping a journal or diary is a distinctly individual practice."
-Chris Elsden [15]
Does journaling work for everyone?
Overall, many people enjoy mood-tracking and journaling. By using an app, users have immediate access to recall what they did or how they felt a certain day [15]. Users also like to visualize their mental health journey, in turn reflecting on past experiences and correlations between them.
The main problem with mood-tracking/journaling apps is a consumer’s motivation to use them. For example, MoodPanda provides tips on how to get the best experience from mood-tracking, including “be honest” and “track happy moods as well as bad ones” [17]. However, one study showed that mood inputs were primarily motivated by negative experiences or dramatic shifts in mental health, ignoring day-to-day emotions [15]. While it is completely up to the user what kinds of emotions they input, only using negative or positive moods can create inaccuracies in tracking.
Another issue is that some users might find difficulty in interpreting their mood data and not understanding what to do with the information. In a different study, participants, even though they appreciated the data collected about their emotional life, struggled to translate the information into something beneficial [15].