Self-help apps are getting creepy now. Sorry, MyFitnessPal, I’m off down the pub not the gym

Karin and I definitely wouldn’t get on. Sure, at first glance she seems like a nice girl; bubbly, well- intentioned, with her hair tied up in unthreatening pigtails. But there is something very sinister about Karin. On reflection, it’s most likely that as the cutesy, animated mascot of a gamified dieting app she is actively encouraging children to develop eating disorders. Mental health charities are now calling for “Karin’s Weight Diary”, which is available for free on Google Play, to be banned. And you thought Duo the Duolingo owl was menacing.

Thanks to our collective self-improvement drive, smartphone apps are amassing a huge amount of control over our lives. Whether your personal goal is to run a marathon, save money, give up smoking or learn a new language, the most difficult part is staying motivated when distraction — in the form of totally "chaaaldish” Twitter Love Island memes — is so temptingly close at hand. That’s where the apps come in.

Remember that little devil who used to sit on your shoulder and urge you to ditch the gym and go straight to the pub instead? She’s gone now and so has the little angel on the other side. Technology made them redundant, by outsourcing both their roles to the smartphone in your pocket.

It’s not always easy to tell the angel apps from their devilish equivalents, however. Neurologists now warn that sleep-tracking apps can actually cause or exacerbate insomnia. For many, the “metricising” of our lives that health apps encourage is anxiety-inducing and counterproductive.

Others, like myself, rather enjoy a spot of metricising in the morning (shout out to all the Virgos in the house). I’m sure it’s this aspect of MyFitnessPal, plus the pleasing progress graphs, which kept me on track to lose the weight after my second baby. As with finding a personal trainer or therapist IRL, the key is just to find a motivational style which matches your personality.

Even that scary stalker owl has his fans. Just ask the Duolingo developers responsible for A/B testing the latest redesign for maximum guilt-tripping effect. If you skip a few days of Spanish, Duo will now express his profound disappointment by crying animated tears right into your email inbox. It works, apparently.

That is assuming we’re right about the role of willpower, self-motivation and an app’s potential to supplant them. But what if we’re wrong? What if it’s not all Karin’s fault, after all? Even though she is, like, really, really annoying. A new study on the genetic causes of anorexia joins a growing body of research to suggest that neither us nor the apps have as much control over our mental and physical health as we’d imagined. How thin you are, how much sleep you get, your sexuality, your fertility and your general susceptibility to treatment are all down to a complex interplay of factors, which scientists are a still a very long way from fully understanding.

Definitely ditch the gym, in other words. Go straight to the pub.

Against racism? Call it out in daily life

It’s taken a resolution by the US House of Representatives to call out the President’s racist tweets as racist, and in the interim we’ve heard a coward’s cornucopia of euphemism, from “racially charged” to “very racial”. Anything, basically, to avoid the use of what some deem to be dangerously undiplomatic language. But this isn’t about insulting the unknowable content of a man’s soul; it’s about acknowledging the totally verifiable content of his tweets.

Why does the R-word produce such panic? There’s a confusion between labelling a person “racist” — not particularly useful — and calling out actions or language as racist — essential. We’re all capable of racism in thought or deed; that’s just life in a white supremacist culture. Or, if you prefer, “a racially-infused snafu state”. Everybody, even Trump, gets that racism is Very Bad, but few recognise its tropes in action. Absurdly, this sometimes results in white people expressing more outrage at the abstract insult “racist” than at the reality of racism, experienced daily by people of colour.

As individuals and as institutions, we show our anti-racism only through the work of understanding and challenging racism, wherever it arises. You’ve got to do the work, regardless of how much you love reggae, the number of Asian American women in your cabinet, or the X-rays you can produce proving your body’s total lack of “racist bones”.

*Have you seen mega-babe Missy Elliot on the cover of this month’s Marie Claire? She’s promoting her first new studio album in 14 years and radiates serene self-acceptance through every pore. Is this an expensive new moisturiser that I can buy?

While scouring the stylist’s credits, I note a Dolce & Gabbana coat and a David Webb ring but the most covetable item of all is the only one that’s definitely not for sale: “Iconic Necklace, Missy’s Own.” As a long-term fan, I should have known; the only thing Missy encourages us to imitate is her total inimitability.