ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a quantitative account of who uses or stops using digital self-tracking (ST). A representative sample of German adults aged 20 to 50 years (N = 1,022) completed an online survey on their ST practices, personality traits and attitudes towards numbers, on socio-demographic characteristics, mental disorders (particularly bulimia, burnout syndrome, and depression) and somatic disorders. A descriptive statistical analysis was performed on differences between self-trackers and non-trackers. Among others, they differ regarding age, civil status, social class, presence of mental and/or somatic diagnoses, performance-pressure, and strive for competition. A consequent binary logistic regression analysis suggests perfectionism, a somatic diagnosis within the last five years, a diagnosis of bulimia in the past and a present mental diagnosis to be significant predictors for ST, though the predictive value of the factors was relatively low.
