"Self-discipline brings me freedom": a literature review of self-tracking through fitness apps

Abstract

Fitness apps that helps users by arranging personal exercise plans, along with the trends of smartphone applications and wearable gadgets, have evolved from simply recording steps and offering exercise suggestions to an integrated lifestyle guide for physical wellbeing, thus exemplify a new era of quantifying self, in the context of health as personal initiation as well as individual responsibility. This paper will review the literatures of self-tracking technologies and their social implications, linking the using of fitness apps to the trends of technoscientific identity, self-surveillance and biomedicalization of health and exercises. The construction of imaginaries of a healthy lifestyle is increasingly connected with the neo-liberalist vision of health, and is situated by participating users and various stakeholders in a commercialized, venture capital supported health-tech market.

Full text

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Title: "Self-discipline brings me freedom": a literature review of self-tracking through fitness
apps
Name: Li Zheng (Elise), PhD Student
Department: History and Sociology
Abstract:
Fitness apps that helps users by arranging personal exercise plans, along with the trends of
smartphone applications and wearable gadgets, have evolved from simply recording steps and
offering exercise suggestions to an integrated lifestyle guide for physical wellbeing, thus
exemplify a new era of quantifying self, in the context of health as personal initiation as well as
individual responsibility. This paper will review the literatures of self-tracking technologies and
their social implications, linking the using of fitness apps to the trends of technoscientific
identity, self-surveillance and biomedicalization of health and exercises. The construction of
imaginaries of a healthy lifestyle is increasingly connected with the neo-liberalist vision of
health, and is situated by participating users and various stakeholders in a commercialized,
venture capital supported health-tech market.
I. Introduction
When I first open the fitness trainer app “Keep” in 2015 Winter – which was still in its beta
stage of open testing consisting of a few features and very limited contents – I was both
inspired, yet at the same time, intimidated by the slogan displayed on its opening screen: “Self-
discipline brings me freedom.” I came upon this app I was then searching for a convenient way
to exercise while struggling to balance work and leisure. I found “Keep Trainer”, which claimed
to allow users to “follow professional real person tutorials, witness the changes in your body”
and “reach your health, strength, weight and fat loss, and training goals from beginners to
advanced level” in a home workout training setting
1
. Until 2018, the brand “Keep Trainer” from
Calorie Tech has become the leading fitness app in Chinese health-tech market with $130
million D-round investment from Goldman & Sachs, and now is expanding to a global market
with an English version. However, the slogan has not been changed since then. The motto, as
well as the message hidden behind – self-discipline and surveillance and the link with being “fit”
as well as being empowered and emancipated to “freedom” – is worth further examination.
With the development of mobile technology and online social network, fitness apps are
becoming popular in managing one's physical exercises, daily movements, and even dieting and
mental status on a daily basis. With the help of wearable gadgets and smartphones, fitness
1
From Keep Trainer app introduction in Google Play market, retrieved Dec 06 2018.

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apps has become widely popular within fitness communities as well as people who are
searching for a convenient, self-guided exercising plan without going to gyms. Thus, they are of
great value of studying the interaction between users and softwares, as well as the values and
interests of tech sectors and how they target their consumers.
There is considerable volume of research that examines the health impacts of self-tracking.
Starting from the Quantified Self movement, a tightly-knitted community of keeping track of
self and knowing self in a quantified way (among the notable advocators are Gary Wolf and
Kevin Kelly), the scholarly discussion about this technology fueled movement has been
extended from the movement itself to the overall trend of self-tracking and automation of
data-collection (Lee, 2013). Initially driven by various motivations, from curiosity to a desire to
improve performance, and fueled by the development of new digital personalized and mobile
technologies, this trend has expanded into daily technoscientific practices of health, as a way of
self-surveillance (Jarrahi et al, 2017; Fotopoulou and O’Riordan, 2017; Maltseva, 2018;), and
biomedicalized practices under marketized, neo-liberal biopolitics (Neff and Nafus 2016; Ajana
2017). Wearables, fitness apps and other personal smartphone based health technology could
be seen as part of the trends and have been attracting scholarly attentions. This paper would
review the sociological researches that combine self-tracking, self-quantification and the
biomedicalization theories to explain the connections between personalized fitness technology
and people’s perception and behaviors; and indicate the future research orientations to deepen
the understanding of current health trends and outcomes of technology based self-surveillance
and marketized health industry.
II. Recognizing “self” through technology
In the last few years, scholars have been studying the process of “quantified self” across the
fields of communication, marketing, human-computer interaction, and sociology, and it’s
connections with ideas of “self-surveillance” (Lupton, 2016), “self-tracking” (Neff and Nafus,
2016), and “self-measuring” (Etkin, 2016). Sociologist Deborah Lupton's book The Quantified
Self raised questions about data gathering and collection of wearable gadgets, as well as the
politics of bodily control in public and private life (Lupton, 2016). Another sociologist specialized
in communication studies, Gina Neff, and anthropologist Dawn Nafus have examined the term
self-tracking, and its capacity not only to survey, monitor, but also empower self (Neff & Nafus,
2016).
Would the gadgets and technologies that promote health work? Research shows that self-
quantification and self-tracking can indeed have a positive effect on performance (Etkin, 2016)

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and facilitate learning insights about one's body and mind (Choe et al, 2014); or function as
triggers (Ajana, 2017), playing the role of “friend” who knows the user well or the role of an
authority such as a nurse or a doctor which shows persuasive effect on one’s behavior (Fogg,
2002). However, it might undermine intrinsic motivation, making users focus on the numbers
rather than the enjoyment of activities (Etkin, 2016).
From the effects and performance, more scholars have turned to the social perspectives on
cultural, societal, and ethical implications of a quantified, closely tracked self. As sociologist
Deborah Lupton argues, this process could be seen as “as an ethos and apparatus of practices
that has gathered momentum in this era of mobile and wearable digital devices and of
increasingly sensor-saturated physical environments.” (Lupton 2016a, p.9) It carries new
implication of selfhood, which values self-knowledge, self-awareness and self-
entrepreneurialism; a moral and political environment in which taking responsibility for one’s
life as an individual rational actor is privileged and promoted (Lupton 2012; Lupton 2016a), and
socially acceptable as being optimized (Lupton 2013). The digital data has not only formed a
new entity of economy, but also circulated as a new form of knowledge (Lupton 2016a). It
creates a “sociomaterial approach and assemblage”, where technologies are appropriated for
everyday practices, and become embodiment of meaning and significance of self (Ibid. page).
This is the apotheosis of self-reflexivity – fitness consumers have more “tools” than ever before
to “take control” of their lives, and are adaptable to their specific needs (Lupton 2012).
The way technology works defines the way we see ourselves. As Ajana argues, we are "reduced
to a collection of facts about the individual", while "engagement be imagined, no longer
voluntarily but imposed on the user by invisible forms of tracking" (Ajana 2013; Ruffino 2018). It
has evolved into a style of thought, as Rose suggests, to envisage life in a way it “can be
identified, isolated, manipulated, mobilized, recombined in new practices of intervention”
(Rose, 2007, p5-6). Although the self-tracking of fitness and exercises involves less practice on a
molecular level in biological sense, the measurements align with the purpose of keeping our
vitality in a tangible and intelligible way. Using the term of “objective self-fashioning” by Joe
Dumit, the objective numbers and facts about bodies and self become unchallenged reception
of power-knowledge, and there is a growing biosociality constructed around individuals that
objectively-self fashion (Dumit, 2014). It comes from a received understanding of the objectivity
– no matter through brain scans (in Dumit’s case), or measuring of BMI, nutrition intake and
body fat masses.
It is through the product design and user interface that these apps reinforce the relationship
between the self-tracking numbers and users’ behaviors. Tt might be seen as a gamification
strategy that many apps are using across fields, to stimulate users to use products, gadgets and

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provide a “nudge” (Lupton 2014b) to their quantification behaviors. Researchers have found
that designing gaming effects as a form of “persuasive technology” (Fogg 2002) into health apps
could lead to motivational behavior changes, but not capacity or opportunity/trigger (Lister et
al 2014). [with notable designs and use of data and metrics] As Lupton has argued, this process
reflects the creation of “data assemblage” (Lupton 2016a) – through the network of design,
coding, algorithms and cloud servers, the app has structured and managed the interactions and
networks that take place through our devices, invested meanings and significance in the
objects, giving us affective dimensions of measurable health.
III. Identity under self-surveillance and in community
As Foucault has claimed, intertwined with knowledge, the biopower goes much deeper, not
only governs our actions but it also structures our sense of ourselves: it makes us be someone
who we would not otherwise have been (Lemm and Vatter, 2014, p40). It is the person’s life
that should be improved, and the goal of the commitment to oneself is life enhancement,
which is improvable and extendable. In certain social and cultural milieus, our expectations of
functionality and normality across the lifespan are heightened, and the surveillances of lifestyle
transcend those of clinical practices onto the self (Foucault, 1990).
As Foucault has argued, as the “technologies of self” becoming prevalent, it permits individuals
to “effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on
their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform I
themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or
immortality” (Foucault, 1988, p.17). It is not imposed, but works through the internalization of
certain values and ethics onto the discipline of self. The knowing of self leads to the
management and surveillance of self, which merges with pedagogical and juridical purposes,
and attains a certain extent of governmentality – self being manageable and legible, and
permeated by knowledge and mentalities (Foucault et al, 2013).
Ajana unified the self-surveillance with the trends of improving vitality and subjectification of
health, which comprise the technoscientific identity (first comprehensibly framed by Rabinow,
see Rabinow 1992) of those self-trackers. Methods of self-surveillance allow us to reconstruct
ourselves in a series of quantified numbers and indexes as measurement of vitality, and
marching through the direction of improving and enhancing. We attain our subjectification and
gain new identity of ourselves by extension of medical jurisdiction and self-surveillance over
health itself, improving “quality of life” (Ajana 2017). Through object knowledge and self-

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fashioning, this type of surveillance creates a semiotic link between the object of knowledge,
and the subject of power relations (Dumit, 2014).
Rowse also addresses the issue of this form of technoscientific identity, which ends up
conforming to a pre-given standard of health and fitness and being normalized and
(self-)assessed according to an idealized numeric identity (Rowse, 2015). As a new form of
biosociality, where the facts of biological self are rendered through a societal way (Rabinow,
2010), this identity produced through technoscientific measures, scientific categories and
diagnosis through self-participation and subjectification, which self-surveillance serves the
approaches and even the very ends of engagements.
This kind of technoscientific identity is both self-centered and shared within a community, from
the very early Quantified Self movement, to the most current online communities of self-
trackers and wearable users. The notion of “quantified self” is often connected with the idea of
technoscientific identity, that one builds the sense of self through the technological ways and
approaches with a series of numbers and measurements. It is often referred as an
individualized and personalized approach and collective/social at the same time, a “networked
individualism” (Rainie & Wellman 2012). Communities could inform what people can and
cannot do when they self-track their exercises, and attach meanings to the shared information
of our data and images (Neff & Nafus 2016).
The emergence of social media and other Internet enabled platforms has undoubtedly provided
new opportunities for building web-based communities where individuals can share their
health and disease experiences. According to Lupton, such practices of mediated “social
fitness” and “communal tracking” tend to appeal to a deeply felt desire to be part of a
community and a need to create social bonds and a sense of solidarity (Lupton, 2015).
Kristensen and Prigge also revealed that through a series of "enactment, experience,
entanglement and integration": users receive social responses in the form of encouragement
and acknowledgment as well as the fear of losing or visibly not meeting the set targets or losing
competition against others, which can be effective motivators for users to consistently engage
in physical activity and pursue a healthy lifestyle (Kristensen and Prigge 2018, page). Lee Rainie
and Barry Wellman used the term of “networked individualism” to indicate the self-centric yet
communal practices and identities, to “locate and join forces with others who have sought the
same material or shared similar paths of experience and exploration” (Rainie and Wellman
2012, p. 280).
IV. Biopolitics and biomedicalization, marketized

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Scholars have given this phenomenon further implications of biopolitics of self-making. There is
a shift in the general cultural expectations of health. Individuals can be regarded as fulfilling
their obligations as citizens if they devote attention to optimizing their own lives.
Simultaneously they are engaging in practices of freedom, since they are oriented towards
achieving personal goals. Such practices appear to be emerging from personal desires and
voluntary objectives related to the achievement of health, happiness and success rather than
from imperatives issued by the state or other sources of authority. In the discourses that
champion the ideal of the rational neoliberal citizen, social structural factors that influence
people's living conditions and life chances (social class, gender, geographical location, race and
ethnicity) are discounted (or flattened) in favour of the notion that people are self-made
(Lupton, 2016a).
The self-making process echoes with the trend of biomedicalization, as Clarke et al. have
framed in their book Biomedicalization (Clarke et al, 2003). Lupton claims that these disciplining
technologies encourage and effect self-surveillance, which she argues further entrenches the
neoliberal moral imperative for patients to assume responsibility for their health and wellness.
She argues that with the practices of selfhood, self-tracking and measuring becomes the
responsibility for engineering better life (Lupton, 2014b), which corresponds with the ethos of
biomedicalized, neo-liberalist era, “managing one's own bio properties” (Ajana 2017). It is also
related to Rose’s idea of “somatic ethics”, in which one experience, articulate, judge and act
upon oneself in language of biomedicine, and bears responsibility of managing health and
fitness in the name of a better future (Rose, 2007). It encourage one to actively optimize, rather
than passively maintain, one’s body and health.
Under the data-sharing culture, Ajana claims that the ideologies and techniques underlying self-
tracking culture facilitates the subjectification of body and health to regimes of knowledge
production and data-driven modes of biopower (Ajana 2017). The users are configured in a way
to be surveyed and managed by technoscientific entities. Whether the data from self-tracking is
“useful, powerful, tedious, pleasurable, underwhelming, wrong…in a variety of everyday
contexts,” it goes into institutional relationships (Neff and Nafus, 2016, page).
By examining the tech-fueled fitness trend, Millington argues that this individualized,
biomedicalized trends take a health promotion perspective, customization thus extends the
focus on personalization – and, indeed, personal responsibility – that has long been part of the
healthism imperative (Millington 2016). And during this process, capitalized market has joined
the socio-technical networks, performing a new form of commodification. Moreover, by
generating data and using data at the same time, users are both producers and consumers –

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“prosumption” as he framed – the automated fitness trend unifies identity, commerciality and
neo-liberal healthism at the same time. This fits well with Alam’s work of investigating the
venture capital fueled health-tech market, placing biomedicalization into the huge business as
the “ecosystem” favors the future vision of optimizable life in a biomedical gaze (Alam 2016).
Notably, these apps are usually financially supported by the venture capital (VC) investment
sectors, who invest with shares at the founding stages before the start-up companies begin to
profit. As Alam argues, the “selling of future” is the key of health technology which pictures the
potential scenario of people using them as a way of self-management; and a future markets
with a lucrative amount of value that provides basis for the current trial-and-error attempts
(Alam 2016).
In addition, users’ engagement would produce a considerable sum of uploaded data from
height, weight, age to the locations, exercising frequency and other habits, which is of great
value as user making “prosumption” (Millington, 2016), albeit not immune to data privacy and
ownership controversies and allegations (Ajana 2017).
Only by promoting the individualized health ethics and the seemingly empowerment of one’s
effort to optimize the sematic self, could the health tech enterprise be profitable and powerful.
It is linked to Clarke’s notion of “TechnoService Complex Inc.”, that the biomedicalization
entails commercialization of data, privatization of health services, and assemblages for
surveillance and treatment based on technoscientific identities (Clarke et al, 2010).
V. Epilogue, and future research orientations
Through the consumption, learning, interaction and the tight self-surveillance, the using of
fitness apps helps to form a newly defined technoscientific identity that defines and delineates
our thoughts and behaviors inside the specific community and interpret their individual
experience in the biomedicalized discourses. On one hand, it could have a significant health
impact on individuals in promoting "healthy way of life" and empowering individuals with
technological innovations. On the other hand, the trend of quantified self and self-tracking
(Ajana, 2013; Lupton, 2016; Neff and Nafus, 2016) has ripped off the social context by putting
emphasis on individual responsibility and self-surveillance, creating a new and virtual
"technoscientific identity" (Clarke et al, 2010) by engaging in the business of "keeping fit".
Moreover, some new fitness trainer apps, in addition to calculating steps and measuring heart
rates and weight, are dedicated to the overall management of daily exercises with
"personalized" fitness plans. This involves gathering a large chunk of personal information and

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putting it into "gamified", "at-home" scenes to promote the use of it as well as to orient the
way of using it, which creates huge business opportunities for extensive interventions to our
increasingly biomedicalized lifestyles (Clarke et al, 2010).
The theoretical reservoir for a social analysis of fitness apps is abundant. However, little effort
has been put onto the fitness app itself; Critical analysis of contents and user experiences, as
well as the social and economic background of such trend, is insufficient. As a bourgeoning new
market trend, which is becoming more specialized and sophisticated, it needs scholarly account
and analysis across disciplines, namely medical sociology, public health as well as
interdisciplinary fields such as science and technology studies (STS), to fully understand the
social, economic, and political implications of this phenomenon: why people monitor their
training both at home and collectively online by using personal training fitness apps, and what
does it mean to our overall understanding of health and fitness; how the increasingly
capitalized health-tech market builts its connection with neo-liberal, individualized pan-health
industry, which is not limited to treatment illness but increasingly linked with the daily
management of fitness.
Potential research orientations include the examination of product design, content and
commercial promotions of at-home fitness apps and relevant technological innovations, and
delineate the implicit instantiation of biomedicalization. Additonally, users’ interaction, self-
identification and overall experiences should also be taken consideration. It is necessary to
study the real user experiences by engaging with community members, understanding the
demographics, socioeconomic status, personal and collective motivations, and their
perceptions of health and fitness. It could further reveal the mechanisms of biomedicalization
at individual level and through the interaction with health technology. Further ethnographic
work could also be done within the fitness community, examining the distribution of knowledge
and power structures of producing such knowledge under commercial initiatives, and the
construction of fitness and health among certain group of people. Under the current trends of
digitalization, there is much room for in-depth sociological research both from the angle of
social construction and from public health concerns of population health; it could further drive
the critical examination in the field of design (such as human computer interface, speculative
design, design critics, or design ethics) and cast more light on the creating of health with
cutting-edge technology with more humanity concerns. Finally, the business which is driven by
the “prosumption” personal data, and the marketization of personal fitness and lifestyle, should
not be neglected; thus, there’s also potential for quantification of health data in market
activities that offers solid evidence of biomedicalization trends that shapes people’s health.

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