Dominance of the apps

Meditation apps were already having a moment before the pandemic hit. Calm and Headspace, the two most popular apps in the U.S., both saw more than half a million installs in January 2020, before Americans were all locked in their homes. By April and May, downloads were surging, and the apps realized this was their chance to become fixtures in our lives.

The dominant apps announced a breathtaking number of partnerships and promotions: Headspace introduced content collaborations with "Sesame Street" and Netflix, and gave free subscriptions to New Yorkers, healthcare workers, and the unemployed. Calm made itself free for Kaiser Permanente members, raised $75M to offer exclusive content to corporations, and sponsored CNN's election coverage.

There's no definitive data I could find on how many meditators are using an app to facilitate their practice — though 52 million first-time users downloaded a meditation app in 2019. It appears that a significant number of Americans are relying on Calm, Headspace, Ten Percent Happier, or another app for 15-20 minutes of quiet and peace per day. We'll have to check back in five years to see if this sticks — if it becomes part of a long-term trend of American mindfulness, or if the apps will go the way of Vine and Pets.com.

Skepticism on meditation studies

Nearly every week, I've been able to write something like, "Meditation may improve heart health" or "Meditation may be good for sleep" or "Meditation provides benefits for those with anxiety." There's good news and bad news here, though. The good news is: those things are probably true, to a point! The bad news is it's really hard to study meditation and there's no way to be sure exactly how strong those benefits are, or if they work the same way for everyone.

The first issue concerns methodology. Most meditation studies involve volunteers, people who want to participate in a meditation study and are primed to think it will be helpful. This can skew the results.

The second issue concerns definitions. How one study defines "meditation" might not gel with another study. We would need to agree on one specific definition of "meditation" or "mindfulness" in order to make sweeping statements about the practice across the board.

The bottom line is — and this is a cliché in most meditation studies — "more research is needed." While meditation, in general, appears to be harmless and provide subtle cognitive benefits to those who do it daily, it's not a magic bullet. Many researchers have concluded that the methodology of these studies needs to be significantly improved and standardized to determine any consistent benefits.

Students are being introduced

"The Curse of Knowledge" refers to a cognitive bias where one assumes that others have the same knowledge they have. Because I write about meditation every day, I often assume that most people are at least familiar with the basics of mindfulness, even if they don't practice it themselves.

But, as I've learned from my many news dives, plenty of people still haven't been introduced to meditation, and are learning about it every day. At least weekly, I read an article from a local news source about school students being introduced to breathing exercises and mindfulness.

I've tended not to include these in my Friday news dives, because they can get a little repetitive. Nevertheless, it's encouraging to see children and teenagers being taught simple methods for calming the mind and responding to adversity.

There's a lot of crap out there

Every week, I've tried to share a few recently-published free meditation sessions. While there are plenty to choose from, good sessions are somewhat limited. This is not to criticize any individual instructor online, but rather to point out the abundance of individuals promoting meditation as a quick fix.

Go ahead and search YouTube for "meditation manifestation" and you'll be met with dozens of videos promising everything from money to miracles. It's tempting to take something as simple as bringing a present awareness to the breath and pretending it can be used to fix all our daily problems. But, the best meditation audio sessions I've listened to are remarkably simple and promise almost nothing.

Since I'm not sharing new free sessions today, I'll once again encourage you to visit AudioDharma.org. They've got literally thousands of audio sessions saved going back decades, with new recordings added almost every day. As with all meditation channels, some of these sessions are better than others, so click around and find something that works for you.