There is no shortage of neat apps for the iPhone that can perform lots of equally neat functions.
But is measuring your happiness one of them?
Matt Killingsworth, who is studying for a PhD in psychology at Harvard University, is a former software developer who played a role in creating the app everyone is talking about – “Track Your Happiness,” an iPhone app that gathers info that can supposedly illustrate which “factors are associated with one’s happiness.”
“The gold standard for collecting this kind of data is what is called ‘experience sampling,’ or taking a sampling from moment to moment,” Killingsworth told the New York Times. “But typically that is very expensive and manually intensive to conduct.”
This iPhone app is a much simpler, affordable conduit to discovering the causes of people’s happiness.
While some are quick to say that this “pseudo-psychology” experiment has little if any real value, an important point remains. Mobile applications do more than just amuse us. As the growth of the mobile sector continues to accelerate, the apps of our generation are also helping us learn more about ourselves and, as a result, those around us.
To find out what all the fuss is about, check out TrackYourHappiness.org
