Mental health care has gone digital—and it’s booming. Apps like Calm, Headspace, BetterHelp, and Talkspace now dominate the wellness landscape, promising affordable, accessible mental health support at the touch of a button. But for many Black users, these platforms are anything but therapeutic. They’re just another reminder that our care is still an afterthought even in the digital age.

Despite their widespread popularity, most mental health apps were built on a foundation of cultural erasure. Most platforms center white, cis, affluent users in content and clinical design. Black people, who disproportionately face barriers to in-person mental health care due to systemic racism, provider bias, and economic inequality, are now also left out of the very tech tools that were meant to close those gaps.

Let’s talk about what that looks like in practice.

When a Black woman opens a meditation app to cope with workplace microaggressions and finds only generalized stress relief content, she’s not being served. When a Black man tries therapy through an app and is matched with a provider who doesn’t understand the weight of racial trauma or the coded language of masculinity in our communities, he’s not receiving care—he’s navigating harm. Even the interfaces of many apps are steeped in whiteness, from stock photography to affirmations that don’t speak to our lived experiences.

A 2022 study published in JMIR Mental Health found that less than 5% of mental health apps explicitly referenced cultural competence, race, or ethnicity in their development. And it shows.

The irony is that Black Americans are more likely than white Americans to report symptoms of emotional distress, especially in the wake of sociopolitical unrest, economic uncertainty, and community violence. Yet our pain is either ignored or monetized, rarely healed.

The fix isn’t just more diverse stock photos or performative inclusion campaigns. It requires fundamentally reimagining how digital mental health is built and for whom.

We need Black developers, clinicians, and Black-led mental health startups at the center of this conversation. Apps like Liberate, a meditation app designed specifically for Black folks, and Therapy for Black Girls, which has expanded into digital wellness offerings, are powerful examples of what’s possible when we build with our communities in mind. But they’re still the exception, not the rule.

To create truly equitable wellness tech, platforms must embed cultural humility into every stage of development: from who’s at the table to how content is written to who’s allowed to shape the algorithms behind care recommendations. Retrofitting whiteness with a diversity filter is not enough. We need systems that start with our needs, not circle back to them as an afterthought.

Until then, the message is clear: don’t expect these apps to see you if you're Black. But we deserve better—and it’s time we demand it.