‘This really takes it out of you!’ The senses and emotions in digital health practices of the elderly

Abstract

Wearables, fitness apps and home-based monitoring technology designed to help manage chronic diseases are generally considered in terms of their effectiveness in saving costs and improving the health care system. This article looks, instead, at the digital health practices of persons older than 65 years; it considers their actual health practices, their senses and emotions. In a qualitative study 27 elderly persons were interviewed about their digital health practices and accompanied while using the devices. The findings show that digital technologies and ageing bodies are co-productive in performing specific modes of health and the ageing process. The study shows that digital technologies not only encourage the elderly to remain physically active and enable them to age in place, but also that the use of these technologies causes the elderly to develop negative emotions that stand in a charged relationship to ageing stereotypes. Thereby, the sense of seeing has been place in pole position, while the faculty for introspection declines. This means that age-related impaired vision can result in particularly severe consequences. In the discussion it is debated in which concrete ways that digital health technologies have had a negative impact. The sociotechnical practices associated with wearables conform to the primacy of preventing ageing; passive and active monitoring technologies appear as subsystems of risk estimation, which in turn regulates diverse practices. The conclusion highlights the interrelation between notions of successful ageing and the digital practices of the elderly.

Where and How Do Aging Processes Take Place in Everyday Life? Answers From a New Materialist Perspective

“…Flexible bodies are not simply extended by things, e.g., a rollator, or changed by technological alteration, e.g., through the insertion of a cardiac pacemaker. Rather, bodies are flexible when new aging processes are co-produced through the use of things or the insertion of technologies within so-called "person-thing-technologynetworks" (Haraway, 1989(Haraway, , 1991Ihde, 1990;Höppner, 2017b;Urban, 2017a).…”

“…Through the use of sensors and cameras that produce new data which is transferred to professionals and others, for example family members, the elderly are enabled to live in their own living quarters even after developing handicaps. At the same time these technologies lead to new practices of aging, ranging from active engagement in behaviors to avoid (false) alarms (Kollewe, 2017) to the avoidance of fond habits such as sexual behaviors (Urban, 2017a): Of course, sensors do not directly induce an abstinent aging process. However, they are not programmed to differentiate clearly between practices: For example, bed sensors are not programmed to differentiate between an epileptic seizure and sexual behaviors.…”

Potential Benefits and Risks Resulting From the Introduction of Health Apps and Wearables Into the German Statutory Health Care System: Scoping Review

“…Wichmann et al [ 54 ] criticized, despite all the potential benefits, the general academic enthusiasm about introducing DIGAs into the health care system, even though there is little empirical evidence about their long-term effectivity, or the usage over several years. Urban [ 55 ] conducted qualitative interviews to research the user perception of elderly people. The author claimed that health apps and wearables motivate elderly people to increase their activity, but they also cause them “to develop negative emotions that stand in a charged relationship to aging stereotypes.” Elderly, who suffer from severe chronic conditions, feel discomfort integrating these technologies into their daily routine because the apps constantly remind them of their illness [ 55 ].…”

Everyday curation? Attending to data, records and record keeping in the practices of self-monitoring

“…We propose that curation, as a theory of attention, helps brings together different aspects of selfmonitoring discussed in the more ethnographically informed scholarship. It links the work of making records (e.g., Pink et al, 2018) with the emotional aspects of self-monitoring (e.g., Ancker et al, 2015;Gorm and Shklovski, 2019;Lomborg et al, 2018;Lupton, 2018aLupton, , 2018bLupton, , 2019Pantzar and Ruckenstein, 2015;Ruckenstein, 2014;Urban, 2017) and what scholars have discussed as the different values of self-tracking data (Fiore-Gartland and Neff, 2015;Lupton, 2018a;Nafus and Sherman, 2014;Sharon and Zandbergen, 2017). In undertaking curation, people constitute records that are pleasing or communicate aspects of their identity or biography (e.g., a trustworthy patient, a successful dieter).…”