With over 260,000 health and wellbeing apps within the Apple store specializing in all the pieces from mental health to menstruation, not to say the default Health tracking app Apple robotically provides you with, it is tough to withstand the allure of those devices. While at present only 20 percent of Brits use health tracking devices, the variety of connected wearables worldwide is predicted to reach 830 million by 2020, a remarkable 60 percent increase in only 4 years. As we share increasingly personal information with these devices, technologies get exponentially smarter, repeatedly in search of to optimise the human condition and resultantly changing the best way we relate to our minds and bodies. As self-quantification goes mainstream, how might it shape the longer term of beauty?

Based on ‘control theory’ a latest revolution in psychological science, these health and wellbeing apps mix self-monitoring and goal-setting to assist users implement behaviour change. With self-tracking at its core, these apps aim to assist people achieve their desired goals with popular examples including calorie-counting app MyFitnessPal with over 150 million users and mindfulness app HeadSpace with around 31 million users.

Critics of health apps find the self-surveillance at the center of this technology somewhat dystopian. Many are beginning to query the extent to which these apps really promote healthy behaviours, with some pointing to the obsessive behaviours and damaging relationships to the body they’ll encourage. Futurologists, then again, consider self-quantification will help us to make higher decisions, reflect on who we’re and enable us to live more fulfilled lives.

Starting over a decade ago in Silicon Valley, founded by Gary Wolf and former WIRED editor Kevin Kelly, the unique intention of the ‘quantified self movement’ was to create self-knowledge through numbers. Measuring ourselves by numbers can impact the best way we relate to our bodies and potentially give us a more objective understanding of what it means to be beautiful.

“Should you can express a human mathematically through data and algorithms, you express a human in its most essential and delightful form.” Paul Marsden

“Self-quantification may encourage us to see ourselves and others as numbers and algorithms,” says consumer psychologist Paul Marsden who explains that algorithms strip humanity right down to bytes and bites of data which could make beauty ideals more attainable. Marsden believes, through technology and science, algorithmic beauty could make beauty ideals more attainable because data demystifies what it means to be beautiful, due to this fact contributing to a more objective understanding of aesthetics. “If pure beauty lies in algorithms not appearances” explains Marsden, “then mathematical beauty is the purest type of beauty. Should you can express a human mathematically through data and algorithms, you express a human in its most essential and delightful form.” On this case, beauty isn’t any longer in the attention of the beholder, it’s in “the bites and bytes of algorithms”.

While it is just too early to comment on whether algorithmic beauty is desirable or not, Marsden suggests it is going to not make us any happier, but does consider there may be a “stoic wisdom” in stripping humanity right down to pure information. This notion is definitely supported by philosophers and cognitive scientists, equivalent to Daniel Dennett, who consider humans are made up of information, and if we are able to map the info and algorithms defining who we’re, we could be transferred to a pc, after which humanity could develop into immortal.

Others should not quite as optimistic and consider the pursuit of the quantified self may very well be harmful to our body image and sense of self, placing undue pressure on striving for unrealistic beauty ideals and contributing to increased anxiety. “I believe it is basically unnecessary and makes people neurotic,” says William Davies, creator of The Happiness Industry. Davies believes digital technologies have allowed us to develop into more aware of how we appear to others which he finds to be destructive. “Self-quantification is just not a cause for peace or contentment” he explains. Numbers are “tools for comparison” and we all know that is bad for happiness. “Any number could be higher, there’ll at all times be someone who’s happier, thinner or more successful,” Davies says. While a few of the users I spoke to had positive results using these devices, boasting about weight reduction or improved sleeping patterns, nearly all of them have now stopped using the apps because they were felt to be an excessive amount of hassle and so they “had higher things to do”.

Technology encourages obsessive goal monitoring within the pursuit of perfection which divorces us from the natural rhythms of our bodies

Consistently tracking behaviours is a fundamental component of those apps, encouraging the self-monitoring of mind and bodily processes; steps walked, calories eaten, hours slept and emotions felt. As Adam Alter notes in his book Irresistible, technology encourages obsessive goal monitoring within the pursuit of perfection and that is troubling since it divorces us from the natural rhythms of our bodies. PhD candidate on the Centre For Appearance Research Nadia Craddock explains self-surveillance and self-monitoring can lead to “women experiencing body shame and body image anxiety, in addition to a ‘disconnected effect’ with how one’s body feels.” If individuals are “religiously” tracking their food regimen and exercise, they’re less inclined to be attuned to their body’s needs equivalent to intuitive eating or joyful movement. Sophie, who used the calorie tracking app MyFitnessPal, explains she found the app’s feedback spurred her on to eat less and drop some weight quicker, no matter whether this was healthy or not. “If I ‘cheated’ the app and went under my every day calories or fats I’d receive a notification warning me I wasn’t eating enough. That felt great – I loved the concept I used to be going to be getting skinnier.”

While at present there is just correlational data – some research suggests the usage of health tracking technology is related to eating disorders – many agree the pursuit of the quantified self is bad for our mental health. Craddock says these self-monitoring techniques position the concept of obtaining beauty ideals as a matter of “personal selection” inside a wider ecosystem of food regimen culture giving people the concept they’ve “tools at their disposal to “work on their bodies””. Davies suggests the usage of these apps encourages a way of individual responsibility which could be bad for mental health, making people feel an increased sense of guilt and shame in regards to the state of their minds and bodies. A number of the users I spoke to agree. Lauren, who used a Fitbit for a brief time period, explains she began using it to drop some weight but at all times set goals too high, and when she didn’t meet them was left feeling guilty, “I at all times ‘ate’ more food than I desired to and would hate myself afterwards. It encourages an unhealthy obsession.”

In the longer term you won’t find someone beautiful, but relatively find their algorithm beautiful.

Whether unhealthy or not, people have at all times ‘worked on their bodies’ because beauty is a human universal present in all cultures and throughout history. From a desire for small feet in pre-Nineteenth century China to sloping shoulders in 18th century England or the more moderen obsession with the ‘thigh gap,’ cultures are at all times actively pursuing an aesthetic ideal. Medical anthropologist Rebecca Popnoe believes the search for beauty is ingrained in human nature and the quantified self is just a “latest ‘modality’ for referring to our bodies”. While technology apps feel like a fundamental change, they’re in actual fact an age-old technique, “all societies throughout history people have ‘tracked’ their health, bodies and their appearance in alternative ways,” says Popnoe.

Popenoe accomplished fieldwork in a Northwestern Niger community where fatness in women was deemed beautiful. She draws parallels between the tracking elements of the quantified self with the methods utilized by the boys and girls of Niger who would track the progress of the fattening of ladies’s bodies. “It was common to pay attention to women’s collarbones and whether or not they were visible or not. You probably did not want them to be visible. Once I got here back from a visit home and had gained weight everyone noticed, approvingly, that my collarbones weren’t as visible any more.”

Perhaps then the pursuit of the quantified self is just the fashionable data-driven modality for tracking bodily progress, to ensure that we’re noticed and admired by our own data-driven tribes. While this pursuit could also be harmful to our body image and mental health it isn’t a latest phenomenon. “Humans are good at finding all manner of strange ways of achieving this stuff!” says Popenoe, “botoxing one’s brow, praying to an unseen god, understanding at a gym, wearing false eyelashes”. If, as Marsden comments, “pure beauty lies in algorithms, not appearances” the quantified self may present us with a profound shift in the best way we relate to beauty. In the longer term, beauty could also be beyond the physical, as an alternative expressed mathematically through data and algorithms. You won’t find someone beautiful, but relatively find their algorithm beautiful. Even when the quantified self enables us to develop the purest, more objective expression of beauty, it’s unlikely we are going to ever stop striving for it. Fundamentally, whether in algorithmic form or not beauty is symbolic of our deep, existential human yearnings for love, desire and to live a meaningful life.