Teenage Use of Smartphone Applications for Menstrual Cycle Tracking

Abstract

* Abbreviation: app — : application The current generation of adolescent girls entering puberty are digital natives, never knowing a world without the seemingly constant presence of smartphones. The ability to stay continuously connected through Internet-capable mobile devices is facilitated by a growing array of digital tools for tracking, quantifying, and sharing most facets of personal life. Although several smartphone health applications (apps) allow for tracking of health behaviors and data, a subset of these apps focus exclusively on menstruation, gynecologic health, and sexual activity. Smartphone-based period trackers have a clear appeal to young users, who are more comfortable engaging with the world through technology than were earlier generations, who often tracked similar information on paper calendars. Although the prototypical user envisioned by the developers of these apps is often a heterosexual, monogamous adult woman, young people at the onset of puberty may be particularly drawn to period-tracking apps, both for their appeal as a seemingly private way to explore a budding interest in health and as a natural way to track and understand emerging patterns in their developing bodies. Consequently, … Address correspondence to Leah R. Fowler, JD, Health Law & Policy Institute, University of Houston Law Center, 4604 Calhoun Rd, Houston, TX 77204. E-mail: lfowler{at}central.uh.edu

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