“I’m only fit when my smartwatch says so”: When does the use of health tracking technologies lead to bodily empowerment or bodily alienation?

People increasingly use technological tools for health and activity monitoring (Carroll et al., 2017; Anastasiadou et al. 2019; Kay, Santos, & Takane, 2011; Stragier et al., 2016). These activity tracking apps and wearables are considered self-empowering because they may help users make better-informed lifestyle decisions based on their data (Sharon, 2017). Recent research, however, suggests that self-tracking technology use may lead to bodily alienation rather than empowerment, because it could encourage users to trust technology more than what their own body tells them (Duus, Cooray and Page, 2018). To date, however, there is no empirical research examining the mechanisms leading to either bodily empowerment or alienation. This project uses a combination of experimental and ethnographic methods to investigate under which conditions the use of a self-tracking app (Strava) fosters bodily empowerment or bodily alienation.

We expect that STRAVA users who will stop with using the self-tracker will experience body empowerment, while people who are using no self-tracker and will start using STRAVA will experience body alienation.

4: both primary and secondary outcomes will be assessed with questionnaires at all time points