Young people's self-tracking assemblage: the role of digital and material space in shaping affective, emotional experiences

Abstract

Self-tracking technologies and apps (Fitbits, Strava etc.), have become increasingly integrated into our everyday lives, spaces and embodiments. In this paper, I draw on data from digital interviews with young people aged 18–26, and an auto-netnography of my own experiences, to explore the role of the entanglement of digital and material space in young people's emotional experience of self-tracking. This paper uses a feminist new materialism framework, applying the theory of intra-action to recognise how the coming together of humans, digital and material space, objects and emotions produce assemblages which have affective capacities. Whilst previous research has employed feminist new materialist understandings to examine affective and emotional encounters with technology, little attention has been paid to the entanglement of material and digital spaces and their role within this. Moreover, little attention has been paid to the specificities of young people's experiences. To fill these gaps, I think with feminist new materialism and work within digital geographies to examine how young people reconfigure their use of and experience of space in relation to self-tracking and analyse the affective capacities of the self-tracking assemblage when young people are tied to a space, in relation to their everyday lives and the covid-19 pandemic.