Fitness, Motivation, and Wearable Technology

Abstract

This case study charts the intersections between exercising motivation, wearable technology, and cultural perception of the body within a worldwide digital culture. It is concerned with how personal, health-related, and socio-cultural determinants shape people's motivations to exercise from self-survival and societal belonging through conformance to standards of beauty. Wearable fitness technologies—smartwatches and fitness trackers—are of particular interest in this research as enablers of these motivations as well as complicators. Although these devices have the potential to improve accountability and health, they also have the potential to perpetuate narrow body ideals, cause worry, and aggravate problems of data privacy and digital exclusion. This case taps a rich literature of fitness culture across various settings, such as in the U.S. and Japan, to show how thinness, muscularity, and cuteness are filtered through digital media and gym culture. It also offers a critical series of questions about the design and impact of fitness technologies: Can they empower individuals without reinforcing detrimental norms? How do we make them safe and inclusive? The study invites students to reflect upon their own experience, challenge dominant discourses around health and fitness, and contemplate how technology might be reimagined to support integral well-being across cultures.