Training to self-care: fitness tracking, biopedagogy and the healthy consumer

ABSTRACT

In this article, we provide an account of Fitbit, a wearable sensor device, using two complementary analytical approaches: auto-ethnography and media analysis. Drawing on the concept of biopedagogy, which describes the processes of learning and training bodies how to live, we focus on how users learn to self-care with wearable technologies through a series of micropractices that involve processes of mediation and the sharing of their own data via social networking. Our discussion is oriented towards four areas of analysis: data subjectivity and sociality; making meaning; time and productivity and brand identity. We articulate how these micropractices of knowing one’s body regulate the contemporary ‘fit’ and healthy subject, and mediate expertise about health, behaviour and data subjectivity.

KEYWORDS:

• Biopedagogy
• data subjectivity
• digital health
• fitbit
• imaginaries
• quantified self

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. This article does not provide a substantive gender analysis. However, our news coverage analysis showed that Fitbit is targeted through health and lifestyle marketing towards young women as a lifestyle accessory. The full range of devices that record and measure activity and health-related data points are gendered in similar ways to the broader lifestyle market. That is to say that both men and women are targeted but women are targeted more heavily, and through different devices. For example, the Fitbit One shows a flower and the Fitbit Flex is smaller and more colourful and signified as ‘flex’ – elements usually positioned on women in promotional materials. The Fitbit Charge is chunkier, black or grey and signified as ‘charge’ and is usually positioned on men with some shots of women.

Additional information

Funding

The research leading to this publication has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) [grant agreement number 288971] EPINET. Coordinated by the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and Humanities, Allegt. 34 7800 Bergen Norway.