mHealth – healthy social media we will adapt

“[mHealth] refers to the use of portable mobile devices, e.g. smart phones, PDAs and tablet computers for administering, monitoring, diagnosing and treating medical conditions” (De Ridder et al., 2008).

Thus, while eHealth depicts healthcare enabled by information and communication technology, especially the Internet (Eng, 2001, p. 1), mHealth can be understood as an extension which takes care of your health when you are on the go. A good example of this is the running app like Runtastic by adidas or apple’s smartwatch which constantly monitors your body. In this case the smartwatch is a mobile media and Runtastic a mobile social media (Humphreys, 2013).

Having worked that out, it is of importance to look more deeply into why we, as a society, adapted mobile media and social media so rapidly.

One might argue it is logical that we quickly adopt things which make life easier. True, but that does not say anything about the mechanisms behind the adoption. Thus, it is important to know about the three logics behind mobile and social media’s success story.

The Network Logic refers to autonomy regarding place and time (Vanden Abeele, De Wolf, & Ling, 2018). Before the smartphone, we were tied to our homes to communicate to the outside world. There was one telephone for the whole family. Generally, it even had a cable so you had to speak from where it was placed – probably in the living room or the kitchen. For me that meant that my family could be standing right next to me, listening in on my conversation with a girl I barely had the courage to ask out. Meanwhile, her family could also be standing next to her and listening in on the other side. Therefore, I picked my words wisely – and maybe did not say what I actually wanted to. Sounds absurd for modern times. With our individual smartphones nowadays we can lock ourselves in our rooms, or, if we do not have a key, even go outside. We can have all the privacy we want to and can call anyone from any place at any time. We are autonomous.

Most of you probably have a messaging app on your smartphone … and a “family group” where you sometimes post something like this:

The Social Logic refers to feeling belonged via perpetual, phatic contact – although you might live on the other side of the world (Vanden Abeele, De Wolf, & Ling, 2018). Perpetual means that, enabled through our mobile devices, we keep our loved and close ones up-to-date on our lives – maybe daily, maybe weekly (Katz & Aakhus, 2001). Phatic contact depicts communicative acts which only serve socializing purposes but strongly lack information (as you can see in the pictures above) (Licoppe, 2004). Therefore this interplay only serves to deliver a feeling of presence between the people involved in the conversation. This presence is also referred to as “connected presence”.

The Personal Logic underpins the facilitation of the individual agency (Vanden Abeele, De Wolf, & Ling, 2018). Basically this means that, enabled through our personal devices, we can independently and anonymously choose platforms, channels, and content from all over the world without other people interfering. This helps us to define our own personality in terms of preferences, ideas and opinions. For instance … we can be ourselves, have our own interests and choose our friends – just like in the next picture.

The multidirectionality of social media offering a big playground for persuasive approaches is no secret anymore (Neuhauser & Kreps, 2003). Still, we can improve our techniques and therewith, our persuasiveness. Opening up a conversation in which both sender and receiver of the message can interact, having a dialogue and discussions, will work better than a one-directional marketing initiative such as a website banner. We have to realize that we are talking about health data which people perceive as highly personal. Hence, they are more reluctant and skeptical. Opening up a conversation will give them the opportunity to express their thoughts and discomfort concerned with the topic. Or maybe they are older and less keen on digital technologies, feeling uncomfortable talking about it. Opening up a community which openly discusses mHealth – online and offline – will give the topic societal approval.

Then, there is the ever-present topic of data protection. Have you ever heard of Bentham’s Panopticon? Probably not. Bentham was a philosopher, and developed a prison in which only one guard, based in a guard tower standing in the middle, was needed to watch all the prisoners in their cells built around it – the Panopticon. Foucault, also a philosopher, took up this scheme and describes how the prisoners became objects of information under constant observation and thus, policed themselves due to the fear of punishment.

So, looking at mHealth we could say that – because we provide our data to the public – we police ourselves to behave in a certain way. In more detail this means that we are less ourselves because we are so transparent and subconsciously stick to societally approved pictures to not be “punished” for misbehaving. Let’s take an actual example: You buy the new apple watch and start sharing basic fitness data with your friends, just for comparison. You realize that your friends walk more steps a day, sleep longer, live healthier, and have a better weight for their size. Automatically, without you even realizing it for yourself, you will most certainly start changing your lifestyle. Not necessarily because you think it is better, but because you know that your friends can see your status around the clock. In times of the Corona Virus, glueing a pair of eyes over the sink doesn’t seem so wrong. 

To sum it all up: While we want to market mHealth successfully, we also have the responsibility to include a humane perspective. However, one question remains open: Does using mHealth make us healthier? What do you think?

What definitely makes us healthier is thinking about and discussing emerging technologies and applications that will be intertwined with our lives. Thus, I want to thank Mariek Vanden Abeele and Frans Folkvord for their input during my time at Tilburg University regarding this topic – which still makes me think.

• Christian Licoppe (2004): 'Connected' presence: The emergence of a new repertoire for managing social relationships in a changing communication technoscape.
• James Katz and Mark Aakhus (2001): Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance.
• Lee Humphreys (2013): Mobile social media: Future challenges and opportunities.
• Linda Neuhauser and Gary Kreps (2003): Rethinking Communication in the E-Health Era.
• Mariek Vanden Abeele, Ralf De Wolf, and Rich Ling (2018): Mobile Media and Social Space: How Anytime, Anyplace Connectivity Structures Everyday Life.
• Michael de Ridder, Jinman Kim, Yan Jing, Mohamed Khadra, and Ralph Nanan (2008): A systematic review on incentive-driven mobile health technology: As used in diabetes management.
• Thomas R. Eng (2001): The eHealth landscape : a terrain map of emerging information and communication technologies in health and health care.