Deceptive Sound Therapy on Online Platforms: Do Mental Wellbeing Tracks Conform to User Expectations?

The rising popularity of mental wellbeing technologies has led many individuals to explore binaural beats—an emerging form of sound therapy proliferating on web and mobile platforms. However, it currently remains unknown whether users can trust binaural tracks on online platforms, or if they deceive unsuspecting users. Our research aims to address this problem by understanding (1) what binaural beats listeners expect from tracks and (2) whether online tracks conform to these expectations. To understand user expectations, we perform thematic analysis on online forum threads and blog posts to extract binaural beats goals and expectations tied to these goals. Next, we design a methodology to measure binaural beats tracks’ conformance to commonly held user expectations. This methodology comprises, (1) obtaining a track’s intent to induce a mental state through track metadata analysis, (2) extracting a track’s binaural beats time-frequency model using Fast Fourier Transform, (3) mapping user expectations to rules that identify deceptive tracks, and validating them on the track’s extracted intent and time-frequency model. We evaluate ∼7K binaural beats tracks and find that only 7.5% conform to commonly held user expectations, while the remaining 92.5% deceive users with deviant claims (e.g., eroticism, weight loss) or deliver contradicting binaural beats. Our study underscores the significance of understanding users’ expectations and verifying conformance of online wellness technologies to expose discrepancies in expectations.