By Ava Goldberg
When society sought to revolutionize the sacred, complex journey of reproductive health, the universe looked past the billions of people who actually have periods and landed on the only logical choice: two Belarusian twin brothers with MBAs and a history in app development. Dmitry and Yuri Gurski serve as the CEOs of Flo Health, which as of July 2024 is the leading period tracking app and is valued at over $1 billion. Today, it is estimated that 50 million women worldwide use apps to track their menstruation, a number that is increasing exponentially.
While period tracking apps market themselves as indispensable tools for empowerment, they have become a documented, toxic liability that compromises bodily privacy through data-harvesting, trivializes women’s healthcare with infantilizing design, spreads pregnancy- centered messages and creates a negative, symptom-based hyperfixation.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)’s Privacy and Security Rules protect the confidentiality of health information when it is transmitted or maintained by healthcare entities and their business associates. However, this does not extend to information handled by other entities, including health apps. This gap effectively grants apps like Flo Health the legal ability to treat menstrual data as consumer data and not protected medical records. Therefore, HHS discourages downloading free or unnecessary health apps to better protect individuals’ personal information.
Data-sharing by online platforms and apps is more than a mere risk; it’s inevitable, so those who choose the convenience of a period tracking app over other methods do so at the cost of their privacy. Menstrual cycle tracking apps lack stringent security measures, and approximately 87% of these apps share the data of their users with third parties. Further, a study of 30 fertility apps found that, on average, 3.8 third-party trackers were activated immediately after opening the app. The study also found that apps deliberately misclassify themselves as “Health and Fitness” rather than “Medical” in order to evade the strict regulatory scrutiny imposed by data protection laws.
In addition to data harvesting, period tracking apps have, in an attempt to be girly, reduced womanhood to something childish, dressing health tools in pink palettes and flowers. Flo Health is a clear example of this design philosophy. The result is a platform that can feel embarrassing to open in public because of its loud, hyper-feminized design. Many of these apps also trivialize serious symptoms by minimizing them to emoji-based checklists and cartoony icons. This can discourage informed care and reinforce a dismissive attitude towards women’s health. One article even describes Flo as a “Barbie vibe.”
Though this kind of design may be warm and inviting for younger individuals beginning their period, menstruators in their 40s, non-binary individuals and trans men can feel trivialized by it. Flo’s facade of girly details also positions heterosexual relationships as the default framework for women’s health by hyperfocusing on reproductive function, fertility and ovulation, framing their messaging in partner-focused terms while also assuming that partner is a male. Further, Flo’s notifications that attempt to predict women’s cycles and periods reinforce the deep and internalised misogyny that perceives women as weak, subtly suggesting that their bodies should behave in predictable, uniform ways.
In reality, female bodies are not standardized systems. No app can predict the sudden onset of a headache. No app can account for a night of restless, broken sleep. No app can truly capture the biological intricacy of a body that experiences every cycle differently.
Coupled with the lack of data privacy and infantilization of women’s health, these apps often lead to hyper-fixation and relentless self-monitoring. This can foster anxiety and obsession over normal bodily differences and can make women feel pressured to constantly track their bodies and compare them to preset patterns. Health becomes less about understanding one’s body and more about measuring it against an imposed ideal of a perfectly efficient, self-regulating individual.
Many users also find Flo Health’s aggressive push of sexual content off-putting, if not entirely unwelcoming. One may think an obvious solution to this problem would be to switch apps, but this means deleting one’s history of health data, so users are faced with the dilemma of either receiving constant uncomfortable messages or totally erasing their medical history.
The appeal of period tracking apps is not merely a result of clever marketing; these platforms offer a level of convenience that a paper journal or a mental calendar simply cannot replicate. For many, the ability to predict a cycle with mathematical precision or receive a push notification before a symptom strikes is an essential healthcare tool. The processing power of the app’s algorithms can provide a sense of agency and control over an otherwise unpredictable biological process. These factors make menstrual tracking apps extremely appealing, especially those with irregular cycles or medical concerns. Yet, it is these same functional tools that serve as the toxic hook that keeps users tethered to a dirty system that compromises privacy, trivializes genuine experience and leaves users hyper-concerned about perceived irregularities in an unpredictable reality.
Until these platforms are held to stringent medical and ethical standards, menstruators should delete these apps, demand transparency and reclaim ownership of their bodies, refusing to let convenience come at the cost of dignity. Society may have handed control of menstruation discourse to app developers, but you don’t have to let these platforms take your privacy and autonomy while disguised as empowerment.
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