Author(s):
Abstract:
As physical activity is considered key to the prevention of many age-related problems and inactivity becomes framed as irresponsible (“sitting is the new smoking”), the market for devices to measure, monitor, motivate and manage activity has expanded. Translating bodily movement into quantifiable outputs, these devices produce data which can be used, shared and/or displayed in different ways, and which are bound up with discourses of risk and the management of future health. While biomedical and exercise science research focuses on how self-tracking devices can enhance behavioral interventions with older adults, I draw on interview data to explore the ways that data produced by self-tracking circulates through networks of technologies, relationships and expertise, and argue that more attention needs to be paid to the ways in which quantification is embedded in everyday social worlds.