From platforms to people: The next era of femtech

By Katrina Zalcmane, head of partnerships and growth, Véa

The next era of femtech shifts focus from platforms to people as women rethink how technology fits into wellness and social life.

Women are spending less time on ambient, always-on digital environments and more time in bounded, intentional, in-person settings.

This is not a rejection of technology but a reprioritisation of how and where it belongs. For femtech, this shift is not cosmetic. It signals a structural change in user expectations – one that has implications for product design, engagement models and long-term relevance. 

I explore three key signals underpinning this shift: reduced engagement with social media platforms, the resurgence of in-person, women-led communities and growing fatigue with fragmented digital tools.

Signal 1: Declining Engagement With Social Platforms Among Women

Multiple data sources point to a flattening or decline in engagement with traditional social media platforms, particularly among women:

• Pew Research Center reports that adults are increasingly “actively limiting” their social media use, with women more likely than men to cite emotional exhaustion and reduced wellbeing as reasons.
• Ofcom’s Online Nation report shows year-on-year declines in time spent on social platforms among UK women aged 25–44, alongside rising use of messaging and offline coordination tools.
• Meta itself has acknowledged a shift away from “social graph” engagement toward private, smaller-group interactions in recent earnings calls.
  

While this is not mass abandonment, it does indicate selective withdrawal: fewer platforms, less ambient presence, more intentional use.

Signal 2: The Rise of In-Person, Women-Led Communities

At the same time, participation in physical, community-based activities has increased. Examples include:

• the growth of women-led run clubs and fitness collectives across major cities, often operating independently of digital platforms;
• the expansion of paid, small-scale retreats and circles focused on reflection, creativity or embodiment;
• increased demand for local, recurring group experiences rather than one-off events.
  

While women are stepping back from social platforms, they are stepping into real-world communities. ONS data on social capital shows a post-pandemic rebound in in-person participation, particularly among women aged 25-45, with a preference for smaller, repeat gatherings over large social events.

What distinguishes this wave of community-building is intentionality. These spaces are bounded, often invitation-based and deliberately offline.

They are designed to counteract overstimulation rather than add to it.

Signal 3: Tool Fatigue and the Consolidation of Digital Habits

Alongside social media fatigue, there is growing evidence of “tool fatigue” across wellness and productivity categories:

• App retention rates across health and wellness remain low, with industry benchmarks showing that fewer than 25 per cent of users remain active after 30 days.
• Deloitte’s Digital Consumer Trends report notes a move toward app consolidation, with users preferring fewer, multi-purpose tools over fragmented stacks.
• Qualitative studies show women are particularly sensitive to cognitive overload caused by managing multiple apps for mood, cycles, health, reflection and social coordination*.

The implication is not that women want less support but that they want smarter, simpler tools that can actually help manage their inner lives.

What This Means: A Shift in the Role of Technology

Taken together, these signals point to a clear trend: technology is moving from being a primary site of social life to a supporting layer around it.

Women are not asking apps to become communities. They are asking them to:

• help them reflect and process privately;
• reduce cognitive and emotional clutter;
• support real-world relationships rather than replace them;
• operate in bounded, intentional ways.

This reframes success metrics. Engagement time and daily active use become less meaningful than whether a tool genuinely increases capacity, clarity and presence outside the app.

Implications for Femtech

For femtech, this marks a decisive transition. The first phase of femtech focused on visibility: tracking cycles, symptoms and bodily data that had previously been ignored.

The next phase will focus on integration: helping women make sense of experience in ways that support how they live, relate and gather.

Femtech products that attempt to:

• replicate community digitally,
• build social feeds under the banner of wellbeing,
• position AI as a substitute for real connection,
  

risk misaligning with where behaviour is actually moving. 

By contrast, femtech that treats technology as infrastructure, not destination, is better positioned for longevity.

Where Véa Fits

Véa was built with this shift in mind.

Rather than attempting to replace connection or build another social layer, Véa focuses on internal processing – neuroscience-backed journaling, emotional pattern recognition and reflective AI support – so that women can show up more clearly in their real lives.

Importantly, Véa is not only a digital tool.

It is designed to extend into physical space, through curated in-person experiences and community gatherings that prioritise presence, embodiment and shared reflection.

The digital layer exists to support the human one, not compete with it. In a context of tool fatigue and selective disengagement, this hybrid model – digital support paired with real-world interaction – aligns closely with how women are choosing to engage today.

Over the next decade, the most resilient femtech products will not be those that maximise time spent inside ecosystems but those that give women back the capacity to return to their lives – with greater clarity, energy and real-world connection.

It’s time to design femtech that empowers presence over engagement.

*Reich-Stiebert, N., Froehlich, L. and Voltmer, J.-B. (2023). ‘Gendered mental labor: A systematic literature review on the cognitive dimension of unpaid work within the household and childcare’, Sex Roles, 88, pp. 475–494.