Especially during the Christmas period and at the start of the new year, many people resolve to pay more attention to their mental well-being. This is why wellness apps that claim to support wellbeing record the highest number of downloads around the turn of the year. The apps are designed to help people put their good intentions into practice.

To find out how people in Switzerland feel about their mental well-being and how often and for what purpose they use wellness apps, an online survey was conducted among 1,000 residents from all parts of the country.

Wellness apps popular with young, urban and educated people

On a scale measuring mental wellbeing with a maximum score of 35, people in Switzerland have an average wellbeing score of 25.8, with the highest wellbeing respondents being older and working full-time. The survey also revealed that wellness apps are most frequently used to monitor their own health data, improve their mood and increase their physical activity. Wellness apps are used least frequently for meditation, recording habits and tracking mood.

People who use wellness apps frequently are younger, more likely to work full-time, live more in cities and in larger households with older teenagers. They also have a higher level of education than occasional users. At the same time, however, it is also apparent that frequent users have a lower level of mental well-being than those who rarely or never access such apps. This could indicate that wellness apps are unable to deliver on their promise of benefits.

The survey was conducted by a team from the Swiss Institute for Entrepreneurship of the FH Graubünden in cooperation with the market research institute AmPulse conducted in July 2023. The 1,000 respondents aged between 15 and 79 were 50 percent men and 50 percent women. The response rate was 24%, with a statistical margin of error of ± 3.1 percentage points. 68.6 percent of respondents completed the questionnaire in German, 26.8 percent in French and 4.6 percent in Italian. The respondents' perceived mental well-being was measured using the 7-item short version of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale.

The Swiss Institute for Entrepreneurship and the PRME Business Integrity Action Center of the UAS Grisons are researching questions of responsibility and ethics in the digital transformation.