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The Dark Side of Fitness Tracking
When health-focused wearable devices spark obsession, anxiety, and shame
For Sheena Roetman, wearing a fitness tracker felt like walking around under a spotlight.
Roetman, a 34-year-old nonprofit media professional, has struggled with disordered eating in the past. In her eyes, the device strapped to her wrist was an invitation to be judged — an announcement to the world that she was paying attention to her health, which, in turn, called more attention to every single unhealthy thing she did.
“Honestly, I hated wearing it and the fact that people could see it,” she says. “I ended up feeling shamed by this little piece of plastic.” Soon enough, that piece of plastic became a constant source of anxiety.
Since the first Bluetooth headset sold in 2000, the wearable tech industry has been hard at work inserting itself into our daily lives. And by all accounts, it’s working: The number of connected wearable devices worldwide is expected to jump to 1.1 billion or more by 2022, and some experts predict that fitness trackers will generate more than $3 billion in global revenue by that same year.
But for many people, donning a health-focused device each day isn’t necessarily a good thing. Research suggests that even if you don’t ditch your tracker after the first few months, it can be difficult to develop a healthy, effective relationship with the device that’s monitoring your calories, steps, and minutes of sleep. In one study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, overweight participants who wore fitness trackers each day lost less weight than those who didn’t. In another, people who wore them for a full year were no healthier than they’d been at the start of the study. On the other end of the spectrum, users can become too obsessed with the data their devices are collecting, leading them to self-diagnose problems that don’t exist; they can get so invested in their stats that it drains any enjoyment from previously pleasant activities; and, in some cases, fitness trackers can even exacerbate disordered eating behaviors.
Granted, the communal element of fitness tracking can sometimes be a powerful accountability tool, providing the support and motivation people need to develop…
