Are we fit yet? English adolescent girls’ experiences of health and fitness apps

Young people’s uses of wearable healthy lifestyle technologies; surveillance, self-surveillance and resistance

“…In our own study, reductions in motivation were reported, alongside feelings of guilt and internal pressure (Kerner & Goodyear, 2017). Similarly, Depper and Howe's (2017) concluded that apps reinforced narrow understanding of health that was related to fitness and slenderness in adolescent girls.…”

“…Drawing on Wright and Halse (2014), the biopedagogical practices of the Fitbit thus worked to instruct, regulate, normalise, and construct an idea of a healthy young person as being active, fit and motivated to do 10,000 steps per day. Similar to cautions raised by Gard (2014), Powell and Fitzpatrick's (2015) and Depper and Howe (2017), daily step targets reproduced an idea that health was achieved through 10,000 steps, positioning the young people as being active or inactive, fit or fat, healthy or unhealthy, good or bad, or those who cared or didn't care about their health. Young people's attendance to and acceptance of this narrow interpretation that health equates to numbers and health is a behaviour that can be quantified (Gard, 2014;Williamson, 2015) is an issue that needs to be addressed in physical education, particularly if self-tracking will become an imposed practice (Luton, 2015).…”

“…One reading of this could be to disregard healthy lifestyle technologies from education contexts. On the other hand, the pervasiveness of healthy lifestyle technologies in society, their growing use by young people (Depper & Howe, 2017;Wartella et al, 2016), and the role of body pedagogies outside of school influencing health-related behaviours (Powell & Fitzpatrick, 2015;Wright & Halse, 2014) encourages further thought and consideration about the role of technology in schools and in physical education.…”

“…(Foucault, 1982, p. 789) In this paper, we use the concepts of surveillance and self-surveillance with inspiration from the critical literature (e.g. Depper & Howe, 2017;Lupton, 2016;Petherick, 2015), but add young people into this equation in terms of resistance and how they act on these technologies, as well as on themselves and others.…”

The Motivational Impact of Wearable Healthy Lifestyle Technologies: A Self-determination Perspective on Fitbits With Adolescents

“…[10][11][12][13] It is suggested that access to personalized data on physical activity behaviors and the ability to track, compare, and monitor behavior has huge potential for impacting cognitions and emotions and, in turn, increasing levels of physical activity. [14][15][16][17] Given that young people are becoming increasingly tethered to their mobile devices, 18 alongside reports that they are increasingly turning to technology for health information, 19 healthy lifestyle technologies should be considered as tools to address physical inactivity in young people. 20,21 Though most empirical evidence on healthy lifestyle technologies is based on assessing quality and validity, 22 an emerging evidence base in young adults demonstrates that commercial wearable fitness trackers and their associated apps increase physical activity levels and impact motivational constructs of enjoyment, challenge, affiliation, and positive health motivation.…”