Friendly monsters, nudged confessions and routinised engagement: the recontextualisation of well-being in well-being apps for children

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, we have witnessed an influx of apps on the online marketplaces promising to improve the well-being and mental health of children and young people. Drawing on Fairclough's concept of recontextualisation , we investigate how well-being is represented and operationalised in four of these apps. We identified four common recontextualisation rules: (1) using monsters or anthropomorphic characters as mentors and guides; (2) framing well-being as a set of tasks and routines; (3) using templates to ‘diagnose’ users and draw them into personalised ‘therapeutic’ pathways; and (4) ‘curricularising’ well-being through literacy activities and tutorials. We conclude this paper by arguing that well-being apps for children often rely on narrow, decontextualised understandings of well-being, which offer quasi-solutions that responsibilise children (and their carers) to ‘manage’ their mental health.