Self-Tracking among Young People: Lived Experiences, Tensions and Bodily Outcomes

Abstract

Self-tracking enables people to quantify and measure lifestyle and fitness activities and experiences. Our study focuses on the role of self-tracking in young people’s relationship with their body and their lived, ‘fleshy’ experiences in the social world. We draw on 23 in-depth interviews with young people using a life story approach. Our findings show that self-tracking affords young people to engage in different types of ‘body work’, to care for and transform their body that is in constant flux by treating it as either a ‘private’ or ‘shared’ project. We contribute to ongoing debates about the role of self-tracking in young people’s lives by offering a holistic approach that considers the individual and social circumstances that render self-tracking an ongoing, iterative, cumulative and embodied process of discovery, learning and lived and ‘fleshy’ experience.