Mindfulness Meets Technology: USA’s Digital Coaches

hird, we contribute to a growing body of empirical findings on the effects of digital technologies on mental well-being. We study an increasingly popular digital technology that has positive effects, in contrast with recent work examines the harmful effects of technologies on well-being (Twenge, 2020; Twenge et al., 2020; Allcott et al., 2020, 2021; Braghieri et al., 2021). We also conduct the largest-to-date RCT evaluating the mental wellness effects of 

mindfulness meditation training delivered digitally, contributing significantly to a booming impact evaluation literature reviewed most recently by the meta-analysis of Sommers-Spijkerman et al. (2021). Relative to this literature, we also successfully design our online RCT to minimize attrition, a key limitation in many existing experiments, and we collect 

measures of productivity and decision-making in addition to mental well-being. Finally, our sample is not selected based on initial symptoms of anxiety or depression nor is it restricted to a student or employee population from any given organization, which contributes to building externally valid evidence that affordable online mindfulness meditation training has large 

potential for the general population

rest of this paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 gives an account of our experimental design, including details about the mindfulness intervention and definitions of key outcomes. In Section  we describe takeup of our intervention, using administrative data on meditation sessions. Section  presents effects on mental health outcomes, and Section 5 continues with 

effects on productivity and decision making. Finally, Section 6 concludes with a discussion of our findings and open questions.Mindfulness was first introduced to clinical psychology to treat chronic pain by incorporating meditation techniques from the Buddhist tradition into secular clinical therapies (Kabat-Zinn, 1982). The techniques typically instruct practitioners to 

direct their focus to a sensation, such as the breath, to notice how other thoughts and sensations capture attention, and to refocus back to the initial sensation. The approach was quickly extended to create a set of interventions to improve mental health. Two leading examples are Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (Kabat-Zinn and Hanh, 2009) to tackle chronic stress and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (Segal et al., 2018) to treat 

depression These interventions have been

extensively evaluated in large-scale RCTs (Kuyken et al., 2015; Segal et al., 2020), which has led the American Psychological Association Society of Clinical Psychology to list Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy as an evidence-based treatment for depression with strong research support (American Society of Clinical Psychology, 2019). As the evidence for efficacy of these therapies grew, clinical psychologists became interested in understanding 

mechanisms through which mindfulness-based therapies operate. This interest spawned a variety of characterizations and measurement scales, (Davidson and Kaszniak, 2015), reflecting that mindfulness meditation may affect many mental processesThe proposed definitions agree on a core idea captured concisely by Kabat-Zinn (2003): mindfulness is the 

of “paying attention in a certain way, on purpose and non-judgmentally, to the present experience.” First, on purpose touches on the idea of attention control, that is, directing one’s attention to certain objects by choice rather than letting it be captured by distractions. It also suggests that mindfulness meditation increases meta-cognition, or one’s knowledge about how attention works and is captured by distracting thoughts and stimuli. Second, non-

judgmentally conveys the idea that attention 

should not linger on or avoid elements based on emotional reactions to them.13 Third, present experience is what attention should target: current sensations, emotions, and stimuli as opposed to thoughts and emotions referring to the past (including ruminations) or the future (including anticipations). Headspace is a leading meditation app, focused on training 

users in the skill of mindfulness. It ranked among the top five health and wellness smartphone apps in Google and Apple app store revenues in 2020, and reports over 70 million users worldwide. The free version of the app includes limited content, with full access requiring a subscription priced at $12.99 per month or $69.99 per year during our experiment. The design and delivery of this content distinguishes Headspace from most previously studied 

mindfulness interventions. The app provides a variety of audio recordings and short videos, often grouped into series or themes. Its core offering—and the one we encourage participants to use—is a 10-day introductory mindfulness course. Other popular recordings help users fall asleep or engage in short deep breathing exercises.14 Crucially, users choose which sessions to engage in and when, in contrast with traditional therapies that require scheduled 

Conclusion

or trainer.The practice of mindfulness meditation takes effort, time, and regularity. Measuring its effects requires recruiting and retaining participants who will take up the intervention for several weeks. Our recruitment strategy therefore favors individuals who are genuinely interested in trying meditation to maximize take-up. To minimize post-randomization attrition, we assign participants to an intervention arm after they have completed three distinct surveys 

on separate days, demonstrating the willingness and ability to participate in a longer study. Participants were recruited using Facebook and Instagram ads specifying that the study is about meditation, and that it includes a Headspace subscription and compensation in the form of gift cards (see Figure B.1 for examples of such ads). Recruitment occurred between