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Tylstedt, B., Sadowski, H., Eliasson, C. & Eklund, L. (2025). Entangled Pregnancies: Expectants' Experiences of Using Pregnancy Apps. In: FAccT '25: Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. Paper presented at 8th Conference on Fairness Accountability and Transparency - FAccT, June 23-26, 2025, Athens, Greece (pp. 2924-2933). Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Entangled Pregnancies: Expectants' Experiences of Using Pregnancy Apps
2025 (English)In: FAccT '25: Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2025, p. 2924-2933Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

Digital applications for tracking pregnancy and fetal development are increasingly popular, yet we know little of how these technologies shape individual pregnancy experiences. This empirical study investigates how 17 expectants in Sweden use such apps to make sense of their pregnancies. It is grounded in feminist perspectives, highlighting the need to focus on women's health. Drawing on entanglement and flat ontology, we show how apps are part of socio-material configurations where they contribute to pregnancy meaning-making. We show how users experience a gradual realization that apps model ideal pregnancies and not the participants' own, how the app's commercial nature conflicts with many participants' ideals of pregnancy, and how participants continue to use apps despite this but engage in selective use. All to support ways of making pregnancy in desired ways. Finally, we outline how users engage with pregnancy apps and the resulting natureculture arrangements where bodies and technology are intertwined and co-constructed. We argue that entanglement should be seen as a process, not a state, as users continually negotiate their use, engaging in what could be called processes of untangling.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2025
Keywords
Pregnancy, HCI, user studies, reproductive health, entanglement theory
National Category
Human Computer Interaction Gender Studies Gynaecology, Obstetrics and Reproductive Medicine
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-567958 (URN)10.1145/3715275.3732188 (DOI)001543679300176 ()2-s2.0-105010818545 (Scopus ID)979-8-4007-1482-5 (ISBN)
Conference
8th Conference on Fairness Accountability and Transparency - FAccT, June 23-26, 2025, Athens, Greece
Available from: 2025-10-02 Created: 2025-10-02 Last updated: 2026-06-22Bibliographically approved
Organisations
Identifiers
ORCID iD: ORCID iD iconorcid.org/0009-0002-9648-9930

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