Collaborative Health-Tracking Technologies for Children and Parents: A Review of Current Studies and Directions for Future Research

Collaborative health-tracking technologies for children and parents have gained significant attention in recent years in HCI. This review examines the current state of these technologies by analyzing 29 studies screened from 15,973 search results across three databases. Our findings revealed three primary goals in these technologies: promoting family health, improving children’s health through child-parent co-tracking, and fostering children’s independence in self-tracking. For each goal, we examined child-parent roles, data types collected, and features that facilitate or hinder collaboration. Our findings highlight key directions for future research, including designing adaptable technologies to reflect evolving child-parent roles, exploring different technologies and tracking topics that impact child-parent dynamics, involving children in the system design stage to enhance collaborative features, and studying diverse populations with varied family characteristics. These insights aim to guide the creation of more effective and inclusive collaborative health-tracking technologies for children and parents.