The datafication of therapeutic life management

Abstract

For people who are willing or obliged to reflect on and proactively modify their personal conduct, a plethora of self-tracking devices are widely available. By self-tracking devices refer to near-body gadgets and related software applications that provide measurements of the rhythms and patterns of everyday life – for example, step counts, heart rate, walking distances and sleeping patterns. People have used analogue technologies for self-measurement and lifelogging for various reasons, for centuries. However, it may be argued that the rise of a ‘therapy culture’ – the relatively recent success of various forms of therapeutic life-management products and services which often involve some sort of reflective tracking practices– has also driven the design, marketing and hype around contemporary digital self-tracking technologies. Self-tracking technologies are often implemented in everyday life and social imaginaries in manners that resonate with the therapeutic ethos of self-discovery and the pursuit of a self that is somehow ‘whole’.