Emotional engagement with technology:How women (use technology to) navigate emotions through their menstrual cycle

This paper explores how emotions shape, and are shaped by, sociotechnical practices through a study of women’s engagement with period-tracking apps. While STS and related fields have long examined the interplay between technology and everyday life, emotional dimensions remain underexplored, often relegated to notions of irrational or non-cognitive responses. Drawing on interviews with 15 Danish women aged 18–49, we investigate how emotions are negotiated and reproduced in the relationship between users and their menstrual cycle apps. We argue that emotions are not peripheral disturbances but central, productive forces in evaluating and engaging with technology. Emotions emerge not only as responses to technological interaction but also as tools for navigating bodily states and inner dispositions. Using theoretical insights from Sara Ahmed’s cultural politics of emotion and neuroscientific accounts by Antonio Damasio and Lisa Feldman Barrett, we conceptualize emotional engagement as an embodied, relational, and culturally situated practice. Our analysis reveals how period-apps mediate complex entanglements between body, mind, and technology, offering insight into broader sociotechnical dynamics. We propose that attending to emotional engagement enriches STS scholarship and opens new avenues for analyzing human-technology-world relations beyond cognitive and instrumental frameworks.<br/>Key words: emotional engagement, socio technical practices, period-tracking apps, Human-technology relations <br/>