Although a recent JAMA study proved that wearable users who tracked their activities lost less weight than wearable users who didn’t monitor their activities, an AJPM study, instead, showed 60-year-old women exercise more frequently when they track their activity with a Fitbit.
Dr. Abhishek credits this difference to three factors.
1. “Just presenting this [data from wearables] to users is not very useful because most users do not know how to internalize this information,” Dr. Abhishek writes. Because users often don’t see an immediate link between the wearable’s data and their health outcomes, they give up and stop using the device.
2. “[F]itness trackers currently track very [simple] measures of activities, e.g. steps,” writes Dr. Abhishek. Though wearables sufficiently track activities such as walking, hiking and running, they don’t track other intense activities such as weightlifting and strength training.
3. “It is also unclear how these devices affect individuals’ motivations,” Dr. Abhishek writes. Every wearable user is motivated by different factors. Though not many studies address this factor, Dr. Abhishek and his colleagues at Pittsburgh-based CarnegieMellonUniversity set out to do so. In their study, they found diet-related apps gave users a better way to track their meals, while app-assisted feedback from a dietician better altered people’s healthy eating intentions.
In conclusion, Dr. Abhishek underscores his belief that it’s “too early to write off fitness trackers,” but that it’s clear that “just giving someone a fitness tracker will not change his/her health-related behavior, just like giving someone a tape measure will not make him/her an architect.”
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