Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-q6k6v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T21:26:40.200Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Future Directions for the Digital Health Self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2024

Rachael Kent
Affiliation:
King's College London
Get access

Summary

This book provides a unique contribution to the expanding literature on selftracking technologies and social media through its analysis of users’ practices of using these technologies to self-represent ‘health’ identities and how such performances under the online communities’ gaze affected their ‘health’ behaviours and practices offline. Much research has now attended to the use of self-tracking technologies in multiple settings such as work and insurance schemes, schools, leisure pursuits and in self-tracking communities (Lupton, 2014, 2016a; Fotopoulou and O’Riordan, 2016; Ajana, 2017; Goodyear et al, 2017; Moore, 2017; Kristensen and Prigge, 2018; Moore et al, 2018; Rettberg, 2018; Ruffino, 2018;Spiller et al, 2018; Till, 2018). However, this research has addressed a gap in the literature, which so far has failed to examine the user perspective in the use of these technologies to perform health on social media and how these curated ‘health’ identities affect users’ ‘health’ behaviours in their everyday ‘offline’ lives. Neoliberal rationalities, which have ‘fundamental preference for the market over the state as a means of resolving problems and achieving human ends’ (Crouch, 2011: 7), have shifted public and digital health practices towards self-care through discourses of self-responsibilisation. Self-tracking technologies have largely evaded critique and have primarily been promoted as revolutionary tools for health betterment; they assist with reflexive management of individual risk (Nettleton and Burrows, 2003; Moore and Robinson, 2016) and assume that the accumulation of ‘health’ information and the ‘datafication of health’ (Ruckenstein and Schull, 2017: 262) are better for individual wellbeing. This is a product of wide corporate systemic structures and neoliberal free market strategies of individualised health practices and self-management, adopted by citizens in their construction of identities, for themselves and their communities, to be responsible ‘healthy’ and morally ‘good’ citizens. Within these neoliberal frames, the body becomes subordinated through adoption of technology and control of the mind (Moore and Robinson, 2016).

Type
Chapter
Information
The Digital Health Self
Wellness, Tracking and Social Media
, pp. 150 - 165
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×