These days, there’s a way to track nearly every aspect of fitness and health. You can track your calories, your sleep, your heart rate and the number of steps you take every day. You can track the number of miles you’ve run, biked or hiked.
Often, tracking products advertise health benefits. Ads for fitness-tracking watches like Garmin and Fitbit urge users to “tune into your body,” “unlock human performance,” and “find your energy.” The basic idea is that knowing more about our behavior will lead us to make healthier choices.
But some scholars are beginning to question that assumption. Do health metrics actually make us healthier? Or do they have unintended consequences?
Digital Tracking Is Mostly Helpful
Wearable fitness trackers burst into the mainstream in the late 2000s, when companies like Fitbit and Nike introduced monitors that could sync up with computers and, later, smart phones. Since then, several independent researchers have launched inquiries into how these devices influence physical health, psychological well-being, and behavior.
After nearly two decades of research, some questions have been answered. One of the industry’s primary claims — that tracking your fitness increases your activity level — seems to be mostly true.
A review of 71 papers studying the phenomenon found that “fitness tracking has a positive impact on users' motivation to be physically active.” Most of the studies also found that fitness tracking boosted physical activity levels and made users healthier.
Yet, these findings have their limitations. Research has shown users who are relatively young (under 50) and already highly active get the most benefit from tracking. In other words, tracking works best for people that already like to exercise.
On the other hand, people that are older or less active are more likely to abandon the device. And, for those users, tracking might cause harm. Multiple studies have found that failing to meet tracking goals or underperforming in relation to your peers conjures guilt and frustration. This often leads those users to (you guessed it) abandon the program entirely. The Fitbit is thrown in the bin out of frustration and daily life proceeds.
Read More: How "Fitspiration" Social Posts Can Actually Discourage Exercise
High and Low Performers
Aisha Sobey, a postdoctoral scholar at Jesus College Cambridge, recently co-authored a critique of fitness tracking metrics. She argues that fitness tracking research has overemphasized users that benefit from it at the expense of those that don’t.
“It makes people at the bottom do less,” she says. “We think of this as an unintended consequence.”
The good news, perhaps, is that these harms may be a result of product design. The most effective fitness tracking platforms hack users' motivation through competition and social reinforcement. For instance, the running-focused app Strava allows users to compare their statistics with friends and followers.
For high performers, these features provide a confidence boost. But those at the bottom of the curve feel left behind.
To Sobey, it’s a reminder of the limitations that come with developing a mass-market product for a highly individual experience. Every human has a unique body and mind. The same tool that provides a benefit to one person is bound to harm another.
“There’s a limit to how personalized these apps can be,” she says. “It’s like, ‘We’re going to get you to this end point.’ You can pick which way you want to go, but the ends remain the same.”
Read More: Exercise Has Many Health Benefits, but Weight Loss Isn't Really One of Them
The Fun in Working Out
One study from Duke assistant professor Jordan Etkin found that, while tracking increases users’ activity level, it can also undermine users’ intrinsic motivation. In other words, it encourages users to focus more on reaching goals and less on enjoying the process.
“By drawing attention to output, measurement can make enjoyable activities feel more like work,” Etkin wrote.
In her critique, Sobey argues that this detriment stems from the outputs that tracking apps choose to quantify.
“We can’t put something into numbers without making it a goal,” she says. “That’s fine if you’re trying to achieve something, but it distracts from the joy of the thing.”
Perhaps the antidote to the pitfalls of fitness tracking is, well, more tracking. But, instead of myopically focusing on quantitative metrics, users might make a note, snap a photo or write in a good-old-fashioned journal.
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
Taylor & Francis. Self-tracking behaviour in physical activity: a systematic review of drivers and outcomes of fitness tracking
Springer Nature. Activity trackers, prior motivation, and perceived informational and motivational affordances
National Library of Medicine. Reciprocal Reinforcement Between Wearable Activity Trackers and Social Network Services in Influencing Physical Activity Behaviors
Journal of Consumer Research. The Hidden Cost of Personal Quantification
Association for Computing Machinery. The Harmful Fetishisation of Reductive Personal Tracking Metrics in Digital Systems
Gabe Allen is a Colorado-based freelance journalist focused on science and the environment. He is a 2023 reporting fellow with the Pulitzer Center and a current master's student at the University of Colorado Center for Environmental Journalism. His byline has appeared in Discover Magazine, Astronomy Magazine, Planet Forward, The Colorado Sun, Wyofile and the Jackson Hole News&Guide.
