(Not) Safe to Use: Insecurities in Everyday Data Practices with Period-Tracking Apps

Abstract

AbstractThe chapter uses the self-monitoring of menstrual cycles via an app as an example for an exploration of the ways in which people engage with data and its ambivalences in their daily lives. Period-tracking apps allow for the tracking and visualising of all kinds of personal data and offer a digitised, ‘smart’ version of the well-known menstruation calendar. In addition to insecurities emerging from ‘taming’ the uncertainties of (menstruating) bodies via quantification and algorithms, the unanticipated collection of user data by private companies and the potential surveillance raise issues of privacy and data security. This chapter will address these two forms of insecurity by drawing on material from an ongoing empirical study into the everyday use and discussion of period-tracking apps in Germany. For those interviewed, the negotiation of data insecurities can encompass an increased body competence, idiosyncratic interpretations of data or ignoring predictive deficiencies just as attempts of sidestepping dubious data collection or impositions of an algorithmic understanding of menstrual normalcy. Hence, the chapter gives insight into the multi-faceted ways people live with datafication and contributes to everyday perspectives in critical data studies.