Who Owns Your Cycle? The Cost of Free Period Tracking Apps

Treating your cycle like a project to be managed can turn a natural rhythm into a source of stress. Moving away from digital tracking allows you to stop analyzing your body and start living it again.

Many of the pieces you will find on display at the Yoni Mudra Art Gallery explore the connection we have with our own bodies. They remind us that our bodies are not separate entities, but an integral part of ourselves and the universe around us.

For people who menstruate, one of the most salient connections we have with our bodies is the rhythm of our menstrual cycles. And for as long as people have had cycles, they have also sought to understand, predict, and find meaning in that rhythm.

The practice existed long before apps or even paper calendars. In fact, some researchers believe that cycle tracking is the origin of the calendar itself; the earliest calendar sticks, dating back at least 20,000 years, represent a 29.5-day cycle. After calendar sticks came knots in rope, cave paintings, paper diaries, and so on.

Of course, today, menstrual tracking looks very different. The most common method is

using a period-tracking app. With over 50 million users worldwide, period trackers are

the fourth most popular type of health app for adult women and the second most

popular for adolescent girls.

There is plenty of research demonstrating the positive effects of these apps. It has been

shown that they can help increase users’ medical literacy, confidence, and knowledge of

their own bodies.

But what does it mean to replace the traditional methods of period tracking with the digital ones we know best today?

While ancient methods helped us inhabit our bodies, modern digital methods ask us to

analyze them. And for all that we have gained through these apps, there is also a case

to be made for what we might have lost.

The Promise: Empowerment Through Data

Period tracking apps are popular for a reason. They’re convenient, often free, and

legitimately useful. Users report that the apps have helped them learn about their bodies, advocate for themselves in medical settings, and manage the impact of health conditions like endometriosis.

However, these apps come to us at a time when "health tracking” in pursuit of self- improvement has become a cultural obsession here in the West. Sleep, mood, diet, exercise, and even posture are now metrics to be measured and “optimized.” And that’s

only the beginning; for every aspect of our bodies that could conceivably be tracked, there is a device or an app designed to track it.

Often, these apps are marketed to us through a narrative of empowerment. They promise that we can become “engaged” and empowered “managers” of our health by using the app. Period tracking apps are no exception.

But with this message of empowerment comes a sense of obligation: not only that we

can track our health, but that we should. That it’s the responsible thing to do. Our culture tends to view personal health as something we can control, and menstrual tracking applies this same logic to our reproductive systems.

As Martina Sardelli writes in her dissertation, The App Keeps Score:

"Often, current and past users [of period tracking apps] I interviewed were guided by ‘shoulds’: trackers felt that, for reasons they could or could not articulate, they felt compelled to track their periods."

This sense of obligation echoes broader cultural messaging women receive about their

menstrual cycles; that it needs to be strictly managed and controlled, rather than accepted as a natural rhythm. As historian Tess Freydman writes:

"Women are expected to skillfully manage their period in private so that they can appropriately perform ‘womanhood’ in the public sphere"

This mindset turns menstruation from a part of our lived experience into an external problem to be solved. We start to see it as a “thing” to be contained; yet another project

to be managed. The app, in this sense, is a project management tool.

Trusting the App Over the Body

One danger of this mindset is how it changes who we trust. You feed the app your

personal feelings (pain, energy level, mood) and it gives you back a calculated result:

"You are in your luteal phase," or "Your chance of conception is low."

The more we rely on these calculations, the less we trust our own instincts. We stop

asking our bodies how they feel and start checking the app to be told how we should

feel. We end up in a conversation with an algorithm instead of ourselves.

I experienced this firsthand. Like millions of others, I used a period tracker for several

years; it was conveniently packaged in the same app I used to track calorie intake (which is a whole other can of worms…). What made me stop was the fact that the app was rendered useless by my body’s turn toward the irregular.

As I entered my thirties, my cycles became virtually unpredictable, and the app’s predictive features were invariably wrong. This was at once frustrating and, frankly, a tad demoralizing; my body refused to do what it was “supposed to,” and I couldn't help but feel that it was my fault (I know now that it was not).

When we try to fit a messy, complex physical experience into a tidy data point, we often lose the reality of what is actually happening. But the fact is that our bodies, and our cycles, are not neat. They are not meant to be. And that does not always mean something is “wrong;” what’s natural and healthy isn't the same for everyone.

The Real Cost of "Free" Period Tracking

Losing touch with our bodies is only half the problem. Once our cycles are converted

into digital data, they stop being individual experiences and turn into a commodity.

The most popular business model in this space is "freemium": the basic service is free, with features locked behind a paywall. But as many of us have learned the hard way, on the Internet, a "free" internet service is never totally free. As the famous saying goes:

“If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.”

Free period trackers are often paid for with personal data. Companies collect the data

you input, then aggregate this data for sale, to train AI algorithms, or to improve

targeted advertising.

You input your health details, and the app packages them up for sale. It commercializes

a part of our lives that, for centuries, was considered personal and significant.

In 2018, Privacy International tested 36 period tracking apps and found that 61% automatically transferred data to Facebook the moment a user opened the app.

Following a public outcry, some market leaders released updates to prevent this, but the

damage was done. Flo Health, the company behind the largest period tracking app, recently settled a $56 million class action lawsuit over alleged privacy violations.

The Risk to Reproductive Autonomy

This data collection is invasive enough on its own, but the stakes become much higher

when we look at the changing legal landscape, particularly regarding reproductive rights.

The US Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson in June of 2022 changed the landscape of reproductive rights. One of its consequences is that the data that period

tracking apps collect, like the date of one’s last period and recorded symptoms, could

be sought by law enforcement as evidence in criminal investigations.

Many Americans falsely believe that HIPAA covers menstrual tracking apps; generally, it

does not. And other forms of digital data, such as text messages and search histories,

have already been used as evidence in these cases.

Although our reproductive rights may not be as explicitly under attack here in Canada,

we would be remiss to think this could never change.

Taking Your Health Data Offline

After abandoning the app due to the frustrations with its predictions, I decided to track

my cycles the old-fashioned way: with a diary, a calendar, and a set of coloured pencils.

To my surprise, I actually found the “analogue” approach quite satisfying. This method

forces me to pause, reflect on what I’m feeling, and describe the experience in my own

words, rather than tapping a button or two. At times, I’ve had to hop online to research

new symptoms, but I don’t consider this a dreadful thing; it has led me to possibilities

that the app never thought to suggest.

Speaking of symptoms, I am pleased to report that taking my health data offline has not

hampered my ability to report it accurately to doctors when necessary (and accuracy

matters a whole lot when you’re pursuing things like egg freezing, as I have!)

If you're a longtime user of a menstrual tracking app, the thought of abandoning it might

feel like being lost at sea without a compass. But going offline doesn’t have to mean being lost.

Women and people who menstruate have found ways to track their cycles throughout

our entire existence. What these old-fashioned methods had in common is that they were personal: something that you held, that you created yourself, and that existed just for you. And the knowledge of how to go about tracking one’s cycle was often passed down among generations of women.

This isn't to say you need to abandon digital convenience altogether (trust me, I love a

good spreadsheet more than most people). But I’d invite you to consider where our data

goes, who it serves, and what you might gain by cutting out the digital middle-person.

Yoni Mudra Art Gallery invites us to see our bodies not as isolated data points to be managed, but as vital connections to the world around us. When we take back the tools

of observation, we stop being passive subjects of an algorithm and return to being the authors of our own experience.

If you’d like to continue this conversation and other ones like it, we invite you to visit

Yoni Mudra Art Gallery at 241 Duke Street in Kitchener. We’d love to see you here!