Baby Apps – Mapping the Issues
A Digital Child Working Paper from our ‘Discussion’ series
The use of mobile applications to track, monitor and manage ever-more intimate and personal aspects of everyday life – from our steps, heart rate and mental states, to becoming a parent – has become a mundane practice.
Baby apps are mobile applications designed to help parents manage the transition to parenthood, from family planning to infant care, focussing specifically on tracking-tools and informational support. Baby app use is likely to become even more integrated into parents’ and children’s lives: as an everyday practice of health-monitoring and self-care, a routine parenting practice, a way to commodify the transition to parenthood, and as a tool for public health promotion.
This paper details four key issues that are central to a better understanding of the social and cultural roles and impacts of baby apps. These issues include the datafication of childhoods and family life; the role of baby apps as disciplining tools for institutional-level risk management and self-governance; the social and individual impacts of the gendered design and use of baby apps; and the necessity to investigate how baby apps can play an increasing role in empowering parents and families.
Volume/Number: 2024-04
Date published: 1 Nov 2024
Series type: Discussion
DOI: https://doi.org/10.26187/abr3-9y10
Suggested citation: Langton, K. 2024 Digital Child Working Paper 2024-04, Baby Apps: Mapping the Issues. ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, Brisbane, Australia.