Buddhify recently conducted a survey of its users to find out why they started meditating. Here are the results:

Notice anything interesting? Nearly 60% said that they were drawn to meditation because of “anxiety and difficult emotions,” or the “stresses of everyday life,” while only 2.3% mentioned “digital overload” as their reason to start meditating.

Now, I haven’t seen the whole survey, and don’t know exactly how the question was phrased or what responses people could give, but my instinct is that if you’d conducted this survey in 1500, or 300 BCE, you’d have gotten a similar set of responses (though spirituality might have ranked higher, and the idea of “stress” as something we encounter on a daily basis is a fairly new concept).

The other interesting thing is that there’s no indication that Buddhify users see meditation as a tool for productivity enhancement, or a way to become more successful, except perhaps indirectly. Again, it may be that this wasn’t an option in the survey, but after so many critiques of corporate mindfulness, it’s interesting to see that even “dealing with the workplace” ranks lower than “interest in spirituality.”

And not to sound like a shill, but the Buddhify app is really great. It’s very much worth trying.