Raising the responsible child: collaborative work in the use of activity trackers for children

Abstract

Commercial activity trackers are increasingly being designed for children as young as 3 years old. However, we have limited understanding of family use practices around these trackers. To provide an overall view of how families naturally use activity trackers towards collaborative management of family health, we systematically identified 9 trackers designed for children available on 4 consumer electronics retailers. Our data is composed of 2,628 user reviews both from the consumer retailers (for the wearables) and mobile application stores (for the associated apps). Our findings indicate children's and parents' collaborative use of these technologies beyond health and wellness. Parents state that their children enjoy practicing independence and rewards while contributing to family health management and daily life requirements. Parents expect these devices to ease their life and to teach their children to become more responsible for their health, daily tasks, and schedule. However, the current designs give limited agency on child's side and require parents' active participation for wearable-app coordination. For these reasons, they do not fully address parents' expectations in decreasing their workload. On the other hand, they have the potential to facilitate family interaction with challenges structured around the data reported through trackers.