With so many apps on the market, it’s hard to know which are useful.

Many are designed by software developers instead of psychologists, without scientific testing. They range from beneficial, to harmless but useless, to bordering on fraudulent.

The apps selected for this list make no hucksterish claims and are based on established treatments. Progressive Muscle Relaxation, for example, has been used for a century and is likely just as effective in this new medium. Knowledge from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy enrich two apps on this list. Others mix solid information with ingenuity.

Do you turn to the Internet to look up symptoms of a disease or condition? How about to diagnose yourself or someone you know?

You’re not alone, according to the Health Online 2013 report out from Pew Internet & American Life Project today. According to their most recent survey of Americans, 35 percent of us have gone online to figure out a medical or health condition.

And, perhaps surprising to no one, 72 percent of Internet users have looking for health information online and most people — 77 percent — start their inquiry at a search engine, like Google or Bing.

Let me preface this by stating that I was born in 1985 and that makes me 27 years old. Arguably because of this, my life has been defined by the rapidly changing technology of the 20th century.

I recall the first time I encountered a computer — it really was an encounter as the machine looked rather frightening to my 10-year-old eyes. It was grey and weighed at least 25 pounds. It took what felt like forever (minutes — in its later years, hours) to load.

And it made a strange ticking noise, a repetitive sound not unlike the clock that hung in our living room, or the motion of my foot hitting the side of the metal desk as I waited for the noise the machine made once the screen finally appeared. I loved that noise. If the computer could talk I was certain it was telling me, whispering among the ticking, Welcome Home, Natalie! Enjoy your stay!

It was 1995. My two siblings and I fought over that large machine, forcing my parents to give us each an allotted amount of time. We cried and we kicked once 30 minutes had passed, 45 minutes if the gods were smiling down on us or my mother was taking a nap.

With advances in technology, distance learning on college campuses has exploded over the last decade.  And as time passes, the mental health community is taking note.

Students want to study when they want and how they want.  Distance learning makes education available to those who wouldn’t otherwise be able to get off of work, travel to class or spend hours in lectures.  

That same increase in convenience and availability could have a real impact for people seeking psychological treatment. Is distance treatment ready to take off?

In the last decade, Kaiser Permanente launched a web-based service known as eCare for Moods, meant to help support patients within their health care system with bipolar disorder. Over the years, there’s been some research to support the use of this online tool to help improve patient outcomes.

In the November 2012 issue of Psychiatric Services, another study was published demonstrating the effectiveness of this free online tool for Kaiser Permanente customers. The study, by Hunkeler et al. (2012), found that depressed patients who had access to and used the eCare system had better outcomes — reduced depression and better overall health.

But although the research team clearly believes this is a “win” for eCare for Moods, after examining their data, I’m not so sure. If it’s a win, it’s more of a statistical win than a win for reducing a patient’s depression symptoms.

More than five years ago, I penned a piece entitled Reliability and Validity in a Web 2.0 World. It spoke about the concerns of gathering data from biased samples — without first understanding in what ways, exactly, those samples may be biased.

Now, with the ubiquity of apps — downloadable programs for people’s smartphones — I’m seeing the same problem arise. Developers and entrepreneurs are pursuing data from these apps without understanding the basics of good, reliable, scientific data collection. And why it matters — especially when you start wanting to analyze all of this “big data” (a somewhat silly term… in epidemiology, for instance, scientists just call it “data”).

Can personal health data be collected by these apps without bias, and somehow be transformed into measuring something bigger?

The election, the 100-year storm with the deceptively cutesy moniker, an (alleged) war on Christmas, and now, yet another tragic mass shooting have further heightened the intensity of perceived alliances and divisions within e-friendships. It has led this temperamentally wary shrink to wonder, “who is ‘e-friend’ vs. -foe?’”

Our postings in the ether expose our true feelings to an extent far beyond what we might normally reveal. Facebook (and other social media) leads us to disclose things that we might not otherwise share freely. It creates a paradoxical sense of privacy that dissipates as soon as we click “post.”

Although postings enable us to connect with others we might not otherwise, highly charged public events incite us to share sentiments that are intensely emotional and potentially very divisive.

This guest article from YourTango was written by Dr. Christie Hartman

Recently, I joined a group of matchmakers and dating coaches for happy hour. We all introduced ourselves and talked about our specialty areas. I told them about my books, including my latest one, How To Find Mr. Right Online. Eventually, one of the women approached me and asked me a question I’ve been asked many times before by singles and experts:

“Do you think women should email men when online dating?” Without hesitation, I told her “Yes!” Not only is it okay to email men when dating online, it’s a useful tactic.

Here’s why.

Last week, Rochelle Sharpe from the New England Center for Investigative Reporting published an article in The Washington Post about the flimsy evidence base for most health apps you can purchase in the iTunes or Google Play Android online stores. Developers have been marketing such apps for years — most of them having no research to suggest they can do half the things they claim.

Worse yet, neither Apple nor Google appear to care. Neither company responded to Sharpe’s inquiries about why they allow apps to be sold on their storefronts that claim to treat all sorts of medical and mental health problems, without the research to back them up.

So what kinds of things can your smartphone cure or alleviate the symptoms of? You might be surprised at Sharpe’s findings.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those who were deeply affected by this storm. There are those who’ve lost much more than just power; the hurricane’s aftermath is unbelievably tragic.

Last night was the first time in a week that I didn’t have to sleep in two layers and three blankets, with my muscles contracting and my body contorting itself in a very awkward position to ward off the frigid, New York air. I was also able to turn on the light and bask in my illuminated bedroom — sans the pitch-blackness circling around me.

There was light and there was heat. We emerged from the Dark Ages.

College grads: Are you better off than you were four years ago?

Unfortunately, for many, the answer is a resounding “no.” Hordes of college grads have not acquired any skills that will enable them to get a decent job. And if that weren’t bad enough, they’re saddled with a mountain of debt that will be an albatross around their neck for decades to come.

With no prospects for the future, is it any wonder that so many college grads feel lost? This isn’t the way it was supposed to be. Higher education was supposed to be the best investment one could make to guarantee a solid future. Often they feel cheated, left asking “now what?”

Video game addiction — also known as problem video gaming — is an issue the media loves to hype (along with “Internet addiction“). Such gaming addiction is hard to define, but like pornography, some professionals say they “know it when they see it.”

One of the possible hypotheses put forth about these kinds of technology addictions back in 1999 was that what we were seeing wasn’t a behavioral addiction at all. Instead, it was suggested we were seeing the predictable adaptive behaviors of humans to unfamiliar stimuli in their lives. In this case, that stimuli was entertainment technology.

Emerging evidence suggests that this may be the case. And the really good news?

Video game addiction may resolve itself on its own — simply with time.