Quantified Self, Digital Discipline, and the Self-Identity Crisis: An Analysis Based on a Survey of Wearable Devices among College Students

<b>Abstract: </b>Recent research increasingly focuses on how individuals use wearable devices to track, analyze, and share personal physical data, engaging in quantified self-practices. Despite this, the psychological impacts of extensive digital surveillance enabled by such technologies have been underexplored. Employing modernity theory and analyzing micro-survey data, this study investigates how quantification technology acts as a dynamic catalyst for self-identity crises through digital discipline. Our findings suggest that quantified self-practices intensify perceptions of digital discipline, thus augmenting surveillance over personal behaviors. The ideal standards fostered by the quantified self engender a dichotomy between the natural and the digital body, perpetuating a perceived disconnect between these entities. The empirical analysis reveals a mediating role of this perceived gap in the relationship between digital discipline and self-identity crises. However, the hypothesized mediating effect of subjectivity obscuration in this relationship does not reach statistical significance. The study concludes that the impact of quantified self on identity crises, mediated by digital discipline, epitomizes technological alienation in contemporary society, highlighting the tension between instrumental and value rationality. The digital body, as redefined by quantification technology, increasingly serves as both a mode of self-expression and an instrument of power discipline.