{"id":64455,"date":"2014-10-20T09:00:26","date_gmt":"2014-10-20T14:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=64455"},"modified":"2014-10-20T11:33:55","modified_gmt":"2014-10-20T16:33:55","slug":"apples-health-app-wheres-the-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/10\/20\/apples-health-app-wheres-the-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple’s Health App: Where’s the Power?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In truth, I didn\u2019t pay a tremendous amount of attention to iOS8 until\u00a0a post<\/a>\u00a0scrolled by on my Tumblr feed, which disturbed me a good deal: The new iteration of Apple\u2019s OS included \u201cHealth\u201d, an app that \u2013 among many other things \u2013 contains a weight tracker and a calorie counter.<\/p>\n

And can\u2019t be deleted.<\/p>\n

\"1<\/a><\/p>\n

Okay, so why is this a big deal? Pretty much all \u201chealth\u201d apps include those features. I have one (third-party). A lot of people have one. They can be very useful. Apple sticking non-removable apps into its OS is annoying, but why would it be something worth getting up in arms over? This is where it becomes a bit difficult to explain, and where you\u2019re likely to encounter two kinds of people (somewhat oversimplified, but go with me here). One group will react with mild bafflement. The other will immediately understand what\u2019s at stake.<\/p>\n

The Health app is\u00a0literally dangerous<\/em>,\u00a0specifically to people dealing with\/in recovery from eating disorders and related obsessive-compulsive behaviors. Obsessive weight tracking and calorie counting are classic symptoms. These disorders literally kill people.\u00a0A lot of people<\/a>.\u00a0Apple\u2019s Health app is an enabler of this behavior, a temptation to fall back into self-destructive habits. The fact that it can\u2019t be deleted makes it worse by orders of magnitude.<\/p>\n

So why can\u2019t people just not use it? Why not just hide it? That\u2019s not how obsessive-compulsive behavior\u00a0works.\u00a0One of the nastiest things about OCD symptoms \u2013 and one of the most difficult to understand for people who haven\u2019t experienced them \u2013 is the fact that a brain with this kind of chemical imbalance can and will\u00a0make you do things you don\u2019t want to do.\u00a0That\u2019s what \u201ccompulsive\u201d\u00a0means. Things you know you\u00a0shouldn\u2019t\u00a0do, that will\u00a0hurt you.\u00a0When it\u2019s at its worst it\u2019s almost impossible to fight, and it\u2019s painful and frightening. I don\u2019t deal with disordered eating, but my messed-up neurochemistry has forced me to do things I desperately didn\u2019t want to do, things that damaged me. The very presence of this app on a device is a very real threat (from post linked above):<\/p>\n

Whilst of course the app cannot force you to use it, it cannot be deleted, so will be present within your apps and can be a source of feelings of\u00a0temptation to record numbers<\/strong>\u00a0and of\u00a0guilt and judgement<\/strong>\u00a0for not using the app.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Apple doesn\u2019t hate people with eating disorders.\u00a0They probably weren\u2019t thinking about people with eating disorders at all.\u00a0That\u2019s the problem.<\/p>\n

Then this weekend\u00a0another post<\/a>\u00a0caught my attention: The Health app doesn\u2019t include the ability to track menstrual cycles, something that\u2019s\u00a0actually kind of important\u00a0for the health of people who menstruate. Again: so? Apple thinks a number of other forms of incredibly specific tracking were important enough to include:<\/p>\n

In case you\u2019re wondering whether Health is only concerned with a few basics: Apple has predicted the need to input data about blood oxygen saturation, your daily molybdenum or pathogenic acid intake, cycling distance, number of times fallen and your electrodermal activity, but nothing to do with recording information about your menstrual cycle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Again: Apple almost certainly doesn\u2019t\u00a0actively\u00a0hate cisgender women, or anyone else who menstruates. They didn\u2019t consider including a cycle tracker and then went \u201cPFFT SCREW WOMEN.\u201d They probably weren\u2019t thinking about women at all.<\/p>\n

During the design phase of this OS,\u00a0half the world\u2019s population was probably invisible<\/em>.\u00a0The specific needs of this half of the population were folded into an unspecified default. Which doesn\u2019t \u2013 generally \u2013 menstruate.<\/p>\n

I should note that \u2013 of course \u2013 third-party menstrual cycle tracking apps exist. But people have problems with these (problems I share), and it would have been nice if Apple had provided an escape from them:<\/p>\n

There are already many apps designed for tracking periods, although many of my survey respondents mentioned that they\u2019re too gendered (there were many complaints about colour schemes, needless ornamentation and twee language), difficult to use, too focused on conceiving, or not taking into account things that the respondents wanted to track.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Both of these problems are part of a larger design issue, and it\u2019s one we\u2019ve talked about before, more than once. The design of things \u2013 pretty much all things \u2013 reflects assumptions about what kind of people are going to be using the things, and how those people are going to use them. That means that\u00a0design isn\u2019t neutral<\/em>.\u00a0Design is a picture of inequality, of systems of power and domination both subtle and not. Apple didn\u2019t consider what people with eating disorders might be dealing with; that\u2019s ableism. Apple didn\u2019t consider what menstruating women might need to do with a health app; that\u2019s sexism.<\/p>\n

The fact that the app\u00a0cannot be removed<\/em>\u00a0is a further problem. For all intents and purposes, updating to a new OS is almost mandatory for users of Apple devices, at least eventually. Apple already has a kind of control over a device that\u2019s a bit worrying,\u00a0blurring the line between owner and user<\/a>\u00a0and threatening to replace one with the other. The Health app is a glimpse of a kind of well-meaning but ultimately harmful paternalist approach to design: We know what you need, what you want;\u00a0we know what\u2019s best<\/em>.\u00a0We don\u2019t need to give you control over this. We know what we\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t just about failure of the imagination. This is about social power. And it\u2019s troubling.<\/p>\n

Sarah Wanenchak<\/a>\u00a0is a PhD student at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her current research focuses on contentious politics and communications technology in a global context, particularly the role of emotion mediated by technology as a mobilizing force. She blogs at Cyborgology<\/a>, where this post <\/em>originally appeared<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>and you can follow her at\u00a0@dynamicsymmetry<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In truth, I didn\u2019t pay a tremendous amount of attention to iOS8 until\u00a0a post\u00a0scrolled by on my Tumblr feed, which disturbed me a good deal: The new iteration of Apple\u2019s OS included \u201cHealth\u201d, an app that \u2013 among many other things \u2013 contains a weight tracker and a calorie counter. And can\u2019t be deleted. Okay, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":64456,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,244,55,2091,2098,252,273,8118,868,290],"class_list":["post-64455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-fat","tag-gender","tag-gender-healthmedicine","tag-gender-prejudicediscrimination","tag-healthmedicine","tag-mental-illness","tag-organizationsinstitutions","tag-power","tag-sciencetechnology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/10\/1-3-Copy.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64455"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64458,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64455\/revisions\/64458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}