ABSTRACT
This chapter examines digital health use, but moves into a different direction by discussing more in- depth research investigating people’s lived experiences of digital health and implications for selfhood, embodiment and social relations. The discussion directs attention to how and why these technologies are used and actively incorporated into everyday life or otherwise resisted, rejected or ignored, and the sensory and emotional dimensions of these enactments and entanglements. Digital health technologies and the disciplinary regimes they configure as part of the practices of self-monitoring and self-care may be said both to empower and disempower patients. Many people who use digital devices for monitoring their bodies find that the act of self-tracking and the data generated make them think about their bodies and their everyday physical activities differently. The affordances for social connections that online media offer are central to their emotional resonances and meanings.
