The Chilling Effect of Dobbs: A Study of Mobile Health Apps Usage
On May 2, 2022, a draft of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs opinion leaked. Within days, people were warning each other to delete period-tracking apps. We follow a panel of smartphone users through the same weeks and compare their health apps with an unrelated app on the same phones.
Google searches for period-tracking apps, April to July 2022
Daily search interest in the United States from Google Trends, the same source as the first figure in the paper. 100 is the busiest day for the two terms together.
Abstract
When the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, it brought significant changes to the landscape of reproductive rights and digital privacy. This study investigates how heightened concerns over government surveillance and data privacy, prompted by this ruling, affect the usage of digital health tracking tools. Using a panel of mobile phone usage data, we analyze user behavior before and after the Dobbs ruling leaked. We find a significant chilling effect on the usage of mobile health apps: an 8.8% decrease in weekly app sessions and a 23.7% reduction in average time spent on mobile health apps immediately after the leak. The reduction is larger for FemTech apps, with a 15.7% decline in sessions and a 40% reduction in weekly time spent. These effects are moderated by prior exposure to social media, state-level policies, and demographic factors such as age and income. We also observe spillover effects in the form of increased adoption of privacy-preserving browsers following the leak.