Encinitas, CA (May 10, 2018) – Four years after the inventor of the cell phone called Owaves the “killer app for wearables”1, the Southern California start-up continues to revolutionize time around the Nobel Prize-winning science of circadian biology. Today, with over 8 million healthy activities planned, the company announces the latest update of its iPhone and Apple Watch apps to its global audience of over 300,000 users in 152 countries — giving people the ability to redefine time using the world’s fastest growing and most popular set of iconography, emojis2.
Owaves is the #1 ranked app for keyword “wellness” worldwide.
Owaves is currently ranked #1 for keyword “wellness” in the App Store worldwide, out of over 1,500 apps, and is now among the most popular apps on the world’s #1 selling watch, the Apple Watch. With rising awareness of technology addiction and its epidemic consequences34, the Owaves team offers a novel, physician-led solution to redesign the digital experience around health and well-being. “Our goal is to revolutionize time around health and well-being,” explains Owaves’ CEO, Royan Kamyar, M.D., MBA, a licensed physician and active member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. “Emojis help our users, most of which are Generation Z digital natives, re-appropriate how we keep time on devices to better focus on our biology.”
Owaves is the first timekeeping system designed to integrate circadian rhythms, or the body’s internal “clock”. Oriented to sunrise and sunset, users design daily routines of exercise, sleep and meals according to their personal rhythms, and optimize based on tracked results. Now, for the first time, users can plan and track a healthy lifestyle using emojis.
Over 6.5 billion emojis are sent daily across social media channels, and estimates are over 50% of Generation Z messages contain at least one emoji5. With a record number of adolescents and young adults seeking mental health support at high school and college campuses nationwide467, the need for evidence-based solutions to bridge the gap of available campus wellness services is greater than ever. “Daily routines that promote physical and mental well-being are crucial across the lifespan. A key approach is leveraging routine motivators that are most relevant to each generation. Owaves is doing just that with this emoji adaptation for Generation Z,” reports Liana Lianov, M.D., MPH, Chairwoman of Owaves’ Scientific Advisory Board and Past-President of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.
References:
1. TiE South Coast. (2014). Panel on Wearable Communications. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFtLXK9W0v0
2. Doble, A. (2015). UK’s fastest growing language is… emoji. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-32793732
3. Andreassen, C. S., Billieux, J., Griffiths, M. D., Kuss, D. J., Demetrovics, Z., Mazzoni, E., & Pallesen, S. (2016). The relationship between addictive use of social media and video games and symptoms of psychiatric disorders: A large-scale cross-sectional study. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 30(2), 252.
4. Twenge, J. M., Joiner, T. E., Rogers, M. L., & Martin, G. N. (2018). Increases in Depressive Symptoms, Suicide-Related Outcomes, and Suicide Rates Among U.S. Adolescents After 2010 and Links to Increased New Media Screen Time. Clinical Psychological Science, 6(1), 3–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702617723376
5. Moon, M. (2015). Instagram takes a serious look at how people use emojis. Engadget https://www.engadget.com/2015-05-02-instagram-emoji-study.html
6. Reilly, K. (2018). Record Numbers of College Students Are Seeking Treatment for Depression and Anxiety — But Schools Can’t Keep Up. https://time.com/5190291/anxiety-depression-college-university-students/
7. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. (2018). College Students and Mental Health: Confronting an Emerging Crisis. Harvard University. https://theforum.sph.harvard.edu/events/college-students-and-mental-health/