Is There an App for That? Maybe There Shouldn’t Be
If every problem has an app, we should start asking whether the problem is actually being solved or just managed in a way that keeps us dependent on the system.
At some point, life stopped being something you could just do and became something you had to apply for. Not just jobs, but housing, health care, benefits, training programs, even volunteering. Walk into a store to ask about work and you’re told to go to the website. Try to speak to a human being and you’re redirected to an app.
“It’s all on the app.”
That sentence now explains almost everything.
The strange part is how normal this has become. We say “application” as if everyone knows what that means and how to navigate it. But an application today is not a piece of paper or a short conversation. It’s a portal. A login. A password you forgot. A document you need to upload but can’t find. A confirmation email that never arrives. A system that assumes you are calm, organized, online and fluent in its language.
For a lot of people, especially older adults, that language might as well be foreign. The information and services they need are now somewhere inside a phone or a website they may not understand, guarded by instructions that sound simple only if you already know how to do them.
Even for people who are comfortable with technology, the experience is exhausting. You can be standing in front of a real person and still be told that nothing can happen until you go home, open a laptop and submit yourself to a process that is entirely impersonal. No conversation. No discretion. Just a digital door you’re expected to push through quietly.
Applications pretend to be neutral. Everyone goes through the same steps. Everyone fills out the same forms. That’s how the system defends itself. But what it actually rewards is not need or readiness, but endurance. The ability to keep track of logins. The patience to wait. The emotional discipline to be rejected, ignored or stalled without taking it personally.
Miss one requirement and the system rarely tells you why. There is no explanation, no human feedback, no next step. Just silence. Officially, nothing has gone wrong. In reality, you’ve simply failed to perform in the exact way the system demands.
This is especially punishing for people whose lives haven’t moved in straight lines. Illness, caregiving, financial stress, recovery, grief. None of these fit neatly into drop-down menus or text boxes. If you can’t produce stability on demand, you become administratively inconvenient.
What’s been lost in all of this is human judgment. Once, someone could look at you, hear your situation and make a call. That discretion wasn’t perfect, but it was flexible. Now it’s been replaced by consistency, which is easier to defend and harder to question. The app doesn’t care. The portal doesn’t bend. The system just waits for you to disappear.
Most people will manage most of the time. That’s how the system justifies itself. But systems shouldn’t be judged by how they work for people who are comfortable, fluent and lucky. They should be judged by what happens when someone walks in, asks a simple question and is told, once again, to go to the app.
By the time someone gives up, nothing has technically gone wrong. And yet something human has been lost.
Jay Werther, a former Capital Region resident, now lives in Summit County, Utah.
Jay Werther lives in Summit County, Utah and writes about digital identity, recovery, and how modern systems shape personal behavior and decision-making.