Self-Tracking among Young People: Lived Experiences, Tensions and Bodily Outcomes

Alevizou, Panayiota, Michaelidou, Nina, Daskalopoulou, Athanasia ORCID: 0000-0003-0859-1143 and Appiah-Campbell, Ruby (2024) Self-Tracking among Young People: Lived Experiences, Tensions and Bodily Outcomes SOCIOLOGY-THE JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION, 58 (4). pp. 947-964. ISSN 0038-0385, 1469-8684

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Abstract

Self-tracking enables people to quantify and measure lifestyle and fitness activities and experiences. Our study focuses on the role of self-tracking in young people’s relationship with their body and their lived, ‘fleshy’ experiences in the social world. We draw on 23 in-depth interviews with young people using a life story approach. Our findings show that self-tracking affords young people to engage in different types of ‘body work’, to care for and transform their body that is in constant flux by treating it as either a ‘private’ or ‘shared’ project. We contribute to ongoing debates about the role of self-tracking in young people’s lives by offering a holistic approach that considers the individual and social circumstances that render self-tracking an ongoing, iterative, cumulative and embodied process of discovery, learning and lived and ‘fleshy’ experience.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	affordances, bodily outcomes, body work, digital technology, embodiment, life story approach, self-tracking, wearables, young people
Divisions:	Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences > School of Management
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	13 Nov 2023 10:52
Last Modified:	16 Jun 2026 20:19
DOI:	10.1177/00380385231218695
Related Websites:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3176770
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