Basically, you use the Happier app to tell your friends what makes your heart sings. You narrate your happy experiences in text or accompany them with photos. Friends can 'smile' at your posts, which is a form of celebratory gesture.
The app encourages one to reflect and share a few happy moments each day. It makes us somewhat more aware and sensitive to the many little pleasant things coursing through the stream of daily life, which otherwise would wash away by the tide of time. Happy moments mostly come in small doses and the Happier app gently nudges you to appreciate them and express gratitude. Even within organizations, the legendary Jack Welch believes it is absolutely critical to acknowledge and celebrate small victories.
Happiness is the ultimate human good, "that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else," according to Aristotle. The pursuit of happiness remains an aspiration of the masses.
Can the Happier app makes us, well, happier? To some extent, yes. Jaron Lanier[1] wrote: "Put a happy philosophy of life in software and it might very well come true!" The app is an example of such software.
Using the positive-activity model, Sonja Lyubomirsky and Kristin Layous[2] suggest that positive activities like sharing gratitude and perform kind acts can increase positive emotions, positive thoughts, positive behaviors, and need satisfaction, which ultimately lead to greater happiness (see below). As the model shows, the path to happiness is paved with many dependencies and determinants. This makes the current iteration of the Happier app seems simplistically inadequate, but it's alright. I think it is that limitation that makes the app wonderfully useful and blend nicely into my daily life.
The Positive-activity Model
[1] Lanier, J. (2010). You Are Not A Gadget: A Manisfesto. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
[2] Lyubomirsky, S., & Layous, K. (2013). How do simple positive activities increase well-being? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22, 57-62.
