Skip to main content

Not a gym rat? Fitness wearables may not benefit you at all

You know that Fitbit ad running in a constant loop on TV? The one with the irritatingly catchy song by the Akron/Family dude with all the super in-shape people doing all sorts of super in-shape-people things while donning their barely visible fitness trackers? Every time I see the thing, I’m (fittingly) on a treadmill, drenched in sweat, wishing the company would offer a slightly more realistic portrayal of the whole wearable experience.

Here’s the crazy thing, though: All of that brightly colored branding isn’t far from the truth. The Fitbit hasn’t turned a group of schlubby couch dwellers into finely tuned Greek Gods overnight. In fact, if studies are any indication, fitness wearables are most likely to wind up on the wrists of people who need them the least.

A lot of the numbers I’m drawing on in this column come from Wearable Devices as Facilitators, Not Drivers, of Health Behavior Change, a study by The Journal of the American Medical Association that sheds some interesting light on many of the questions we’ve had around the popularity and efficacy of fitness wearables. It’s worth a read if you have even the remotest interest in wearable technology.

As the piece puts it, “wearable devices seem to appeal to groups that might need them least.” That’s really the worst kept secret in wearables — while espousing all their potential health benefits, it’s easy to overlook the fact that, in many cases, they appeal the most to people who are already healthy. This issue is due partially to the fact that people who buy such devices tend to be younger, early adopters who aren’t experiencing the ill health effects of not exercising.

Unsurprisingly, due to their $100+ price points, wearables also tend to appeal to those who have more money. Study after study will tell you that there’s a very real link between poverty and obesity, which means that, in these relatively early days of the wearable craze, these devices are far less likely to get onto the wrists of people who need them.

In fact, here’s a number to put things into perspective for those of us who live in the wearable bubble: While the industry is projected to be around $50 billion by the year 2018, only 1-2 percent of people in the United States actually own a wearable. For the vast majority of folks, wearables don’t yet exist outside news reports and those annoyingly positive ads.

Fitness wearables are just more likely to wind up on the wrists of people who, in a sense, need them the least.

Continually dropping prices will solve part of this problem. It’s not too hard to imagine a day in the near future where you can walk down to Walgreens and pick up a $5 wearable device. We’re also already seeing health tracking technology integrated into our existing smart devices. Most Americans may not shell out $150 for a bracelet that exists for the sole purpose of counting steps, but as we near smartphone ubiquity in this country, it’s much easier to envision people doing some sort of app-based tracking through the technology they already own.

Still, even if we fast-forward to a time when most Americans either own a standalone wearable or have a smart device capable of some manner of health tracking, we may still be on the road to nowhere. As the temporary pull-up bar that I bought and hung over my kitchen door can attest, we have plenty of technology that can help get us in better shape — but we don’t really posses the means for forcing us to use the stuff. Hell, that’s what keeps all of those shouty personal trainers at your gym in business. If our fitness technology possessed the ability to motivate us, they’d be walking their finely tuned bodies down to the unemployment line.

Like the row after row of pristine treadmills at the gym you belong to but never actually visit, no fitness wearable is smart enough to actually work out for you. Regiments are difficult to maintain. In fact, our gyms couldn’t even operate if we all worked out regularly.

Basis
Basis

Companies like Basis are trying to offer a sort of built-in electronic personal trainer, giving users slightly annoying, but often necessary reminders to get up and go for a walk or a run or even just stand up and stretch every half hour or so.

The American Medical Association suggests tying such devices more closely into our healthcare, which is something we’re seeing more and more. I used to work for a big corporation that offered a free pedometer, which actually reduced healthcare costs if its wearer took a certain number of steps in a day. At least that’s a solution that speaks to the ever-important influence of money in our daily lives.

The other solution is that technology just keeps trying new ways to get us to move more — an increasingly difficult goal in an era of ever-shrinking attention spans.

Until Fitbit designs a device that will swing the kettlebell itself, the heavy lifting is still on us. For now, fitness wearables are making the fit even fitter, and doing little for the rest of us.

Brian Heater
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Brian Heater has worked at number of tech pubs, including Engadget, PCMag and Laptop. His writing has appeared in Spin…
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more
How does Garmin measure stress, and is it really accurate?
Garmin Vivomove Sport dial close up. Credits: Garmin official.

Garmin watches are known for their robust activity tracking, but that's not all these fitness watches can do. Over the years, the company has been adding wellness features to its lineup of watches. These new health-focused metrics allow people to analyze their fitness and identify outside factors affecting their performance. One such factor is stress, which is something Garmin watches actively measures.
But you may be wondering—exactly how does Garmin measure stress? In this article, we break down how Garmin measures stress and delve into the accuracy of this metric. Should you trust your stress score? Read on to find out.

Is Garmin's stress score accurate?

Read more