What looks wrong
A cheerful app that says play, get sharper, fend off decline.
What’s actually going on
In 2016 Lumos Labs agreed to pay $2 million to settle FTC charges that it lacked evidence for claims that Lumosity improved work and school performance, delayed age-related decline, or reduced impairment from conditions including dementia, Alzheimer's, stroke, and ADHD. The order also required a simple way to cancel auto-renewals.
The ads made a tidy bargain. Spend 10 or 15 minutes in a colorful game and you were not just playing. You were training a brain that would then show up for work, for school, for sport — and, the FTC said the company claimed, a brain better defended against dementia and Alzheimer's.
Jessica Rich, then the FTC's consumer-protection director, put the charge in one sentence: Lumosity 'preyed on consumers' fears about age-related cognitive decline' and 'simply did not have the science to back up its ads.' The complaint also covered claims about stroke, traumatic brain injury, PTSD, ADHD, and chemo fog.
The 2016 order imposed a $50 million judgment, suspended after a $2 million payment because of the company's finances, barred future cognition claims without competent human clinical evidence, and made Lumos tell auto-renew subscribers how to cancel in one step. Playing a game can still be a game. Selling it as a medical shield is the claim we are voting on.
Source: FTC Lumosity settlement press release, 5 January 2016. We quote the public record. A settlement is not always an admission.