Daymend press notes
A source-ready briefing for writers covering healthier news habits, constructive journalism, and Daymend.
Daymend at a glance
A plain fact sheet, written to be quoted directly.
- What it is
- A positive-news app for iPhone and Android. Daymend delivers seven curated positive news stories a day, each with a short, clear summary, and then it ends. The core daily seven is free and has no ads.
- Who makes it
- A small, independent team in Sweden.
- Platform
- iPhone (iOS) and Android. The home-screen widget is iPhone-only.
- Languages
- Five: English, Spanish, Swedish, German, and Brazilian Portuguese.
- Free and Premium
- The daily seven, mood check-ins, and basic insights are free. An optional Premium subscription adds the full archive, deeper before-and-after mood breakdowns, and personalised recommendations.
- Price
- Premium is US $6.99 per month or US $39.99 per year, each with a 7-day free trial for eligible new subscribers. These are US prices; the App Store or Google Play shows the price for your country.
- How the seven are chosen
- The catalogue is curated: every story passes multi-stage AI quality checks, and a human editor spot-audits stories and their translations for tone and accuracy. Each day's seven are then selected automatically and ordered by a fixed ranking. No one hand-picks the daily line-up.
- Press contact
- press@daymend.com
What counts as good news
It has to be a real event, and it has to be genuinely good. Daymend keeps two kinds of story.
Progress
Something measurably got better: a trial result, a new law, something built, more people getting access to something they need.
Warmth
Stories without a big number attached: kindness, an animal rescue, art, sport, good news from one town. These count too.
What gets turned away
Advice and opinion, press releases and anything sponsored, a short list of very heavy topics even when there's a hopeful angle, and anything that would have to be stretched to sound good.
From the source to your seven
New stories are screened and summarised with AI help, and each summary is checked against its source article. A person reads a report on each new batch and signs it off before it goes into the app. Each day, software then puts the seven together by fixed rules that weigh things like how uplifting each story is, how far its impact reaches, a spread of topics and the topics you follow. Every story links to the original article.
Ten findings worth citing
These are the strongest, clearest findings in our evidence review. Follow each link before quoting it and keep the stated limitations in view.
- Peer-reviewed experiment
Fourteen minutes of negatively framed television news increased sadness and anxiety in a laboratory study.
Limit: The sample was small and the outcome was immediate mood, not lasting mental health.
Johnston & Davey, British Journal of Psychology, 1997
- Peer-reviewed experiment
Two to four minutes of negative COVID-19 news on social media reduced positive affect in an experiment.
Limit: This measured a brief reaction during the pandemic, not everyday news use over months.
Buchanan et al., PLOS ONE, 2021
- Peer-reviewed experiment
Constructive news increased readers' sense that they could respond to the issue and how credible they found the news.
Limit: This was a brief online experiment during the COVID-19 period. Effects can depend on the topic and how the story is told.
Overgaard, Journalism, 2023
- Industry-funded report, not peer-reviewed
In a Solutions Journalism Network study, 51% preferred the solutions version while 32% preferred the problem-only version.
Limit: This was an industry-funded audience study, not peer-reviewed independent research.
SmithGeiger / Solutions Journalism Network, 2021
- Peer-reviewed field experiment
Each additional negative word in a headline increased click-through rate by about 2.3% in a large online experiment.
Limit: The result concerns headline clicks on one news platform, not whether negativity keeps people informed or well.
Robertson et al., Nature Human Behaviour, 2023
- Peer-reviewed lab measurement
Across 17 countries, people reacted more strongly to negative than positive television news.
Limit: The average pattern varied by person and country, so it is not a universal response.
Soroka, Fournier & Nir, PNAS, 2019
- Institution working paper, not peer-reviewed
Eighty-seven percent of U.S. national COVID-19 coverage was negative, even when cases were falling.
Limit: This is a revised institutional working paper, not a peer-reviewed journal article, and it covers one exceptional news period.
Sacerdote, Sehgal & Cook, NBER WP 28110, rev. March 2021
- Peer-reviewed randomized trial
Limiting Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat to about 30 minutes a day for three weeks reduced loneliness and depression in 143 students.
Limit: The study was small, short, student-only, and about social media rather than a finite news product.
Hunt et al., Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 2018
- Peer-reviewed randomized trial
A one-week break from social media improved wellbeing, depression, and anxiety scores in a randomized trial of 154 adults.
Limit: A short break is different from a lasting habit, and the study did not isolate news content.
Lambert et al., Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 2022
- Peer-reviewed meta-analysis
Recent meta-analyses find small average wellbeing benefits from gratitude interventions, around g=0.19 to 0.22.
Limit: Effects are modest, studies vary, and gratitude exercises are not the same as reading positive news.
International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology, 2023; meta-analysis, 2025
About Daymend
Daymend is a positive-news app for iPhone and Android built around a finite daily ritual: seven curated stories, clear summaries, and a real ending. The core daily seven is free and ad-free. Mood check-ins, story links, and basic insights are free too. Optional Premium adds the full archive, deeper before-and-after breakdowns, insight into the story linked to your largest recorded change this month, and personalised recommendations.
What Daymend does not claim
Daymend is not a treatment for anxiety, depression, or any medical condition. The research on this page informs the product's approach, but it is not a clinical test of the app.
The people behind it
Daymend is built by one person in Sweden, on nights and weekends. The human half of the editorial work is done by his mother, who spot-audits stories and their translations for tone and accuracy through a custom admin dashboard. It stays deliberately small: a two-person, family-run editorial operation.
Media contact
For interviews, fact-checking, or a product walkthrough, get in touch:
press@daymend.comAssets
The current app icons and a set of product screenshots are ready to download below. For anything else, email press@daymend.com.
Screenshots
Start tomorrow with seven positive news stories.
Free to download for iPhone and Android.
