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There's Even More Evidence That Fitness Trackers Don't Work (fortune.com)
Turns out it's really hard to persuade people to exercise -- even when they have access to how many steps they've taken, and even when they get paid for it. A staggering 90 percent of people stop wearing fitness trackers when given the choice. Fortune reports: In the new yearlong study, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, researchers randomized 800 people in Singapore who had a full-time job into four groups. Some wore a Fitbit Zip and were paid a small amount of money to get moving -- which they were instructed either to keep or to donate to charity -- while others didn't wear Fitbits. Researchers measured their physical activity, weight, blood pressure, the body's ability to use oxygen (called cardiorespiratory fitness) and their self-reported quality of life. For the last six months of the study, all incentives were dropped, and people could choose whether or not to continue wearing their fitness trackers. (About 40% of people had stopped wearing it in the first six months anyway.) The cash seemed to work at first. Those who were rewarded with cash did an extra 13 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity each week and added 570 steps to their daily counts. Raising money for charity had no effect. But once the monetary rewards stopped, so did the improvements. By the end of the study, just 10% of people were still wearing the trackers.
The devices' primary purpose is their namesake - to track the physical activity of the owner. Whether or not that encourages the owner to be more active is another story. It would be like saying a new automobile doesn't work simply because it didn't encourage its owner to drive more.
Now why would you want to install Windows 10 on it?
Table-ized A.I.
So you're saying if the government offered the populace a small cash incentive to exercise, people would do it (in USA resulting benefits for the current massive third obese and out of shape chunk of the populace would far outweigh the minuscule cost)
Maybe I missed a headline, what was the original evidence?
Tracking fitness? Of course not. Tracking? Yes!
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All planets of the solar federation
I can see a device being pretty limited in scope of function, being dropped after a while as most people seemly don't want to track stuff all the time.
That's why I think the Apple Watch is in the long run much more successful in this category - it's not just tracking fitness, also time and whatever other apps you have on board (like running / cycling stats). So the drop-off rate for an Apple Watch will be a lot lower, thus over time more and more people that are even inclined to use a fitness tracker will through attribution wind up with Apple Watches because they still track fitness, but will be worn for other reasons also.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The judicial system can force you to wear a tracker and most people would be horrified at the thought of wearing one.
Somewhere out there someone in a marketing department figured out a way to make people pay to wear a tracking device... KUDOS!
It's hardwired into our brains: Don't expend energy unnecessarily! Conserve your bodyfat as much as possible, tomorrow or the next day or next week there may be nothing to eat! Famine is coming! You must survive long enough to breed! Doesn't matter that we're not hunter-gatherers anymore and that you can op into your car and drive 5 minutes to the grocery store and get enough food to feed yourself for weeks, or that there's an obesity problem, it's hardwired into our caveman-like brains to conserve energy, move only as much as necessary. Also, the vast majority of people find exercise to be unpleasant, therefore they'll avoid it any way they can, even if they know on an intellectual level that it's good for them, they'll feel better in the long run, live longer, be happier -- doesn't matter, it's unpleasant right now, emotionally they just can't bring themselves to do it, therefore they don't. For what it's worth, while abstract reasons to exercise regularly like "To be healthier", or "Because I want to lose weight" don't work, having a non-abstract reason, like "I want to run a (half) marathon next year", or "I want to participate in such-and-such sport so I'm training for that" seem to work better.
They are designed to make money from the same suckers who also buy other kinds of useless gadgets.
But don't worry, the "wearable" industry is just getting started.
better headline:
people with a fitness tracker are still lazy
Life is easy for many of us. Our forefathers/mothers would have preferred this. A tech trinket is not enough and guilt exercise does not work.
1. enroll in paid fitness tracker program
2. put it on your dog
3. ???
4. Profit!
Try it! Library of Babel
Study summary: Select a bunch of people who aren't currently using a tracker and encourage them to use a tracker. Then drop the encouragement and see what sticks.
If you want to see if fitness trackers work, use a self-selection group. Find a bunch of people who have been wanting to get in better shape but are not currently vigorous exercisers (or whatever standardizable measure of success you can use), and divide them up randomly. Give some fitness trackers. See how it impacts them. Doing it this way would take groups who are both interested (want to) but not necessarily motivated (experience reward which encourages effort) to exercise regularly and identify between them.
Problems with this approach: poor reporting (one group must self-report; the other has actual data); and masked reporting has an impact (a group with a fitness tracker that tells them nothing will do extra work to ensure data IS there). It's actually worth it to study a group without a tracker, a group with a tracker, and a group with an occluded tracker who are also self-reporting (to compare perception to data). Likewise, the act of reporting creates confounding.
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Most of these trackers are glorified pedometers.
The heart rate measurement on the newer models (to my knowledge) is quite inaccurate, especially when sweaty or in certain weather.
I would love to know:
heart rate
blood pressure
breathing rate
blood sugar level
At least those 4 quite accurate would be pretty nice or at least within a true 5%.
I imagine this is basically impossible without some kind of small implant (then how do you charge it? is it safe? how long does it last?)
We're getting closer to this stuff but the current toys are a gimmick.
Fitness trackers don't make random people want to be fitter. Rather, they help someone who wants to be fit track their progress.
Always like to waste their money on worthless gizmos and always somehow end up talking themselves right even though they're actually factually wrong, like how smoking used to be good for you and approved by many doctors as a cure for tons of shit...
I have a Xiaomi Mi Band, not for a fitness tracker, but for a wearable notification device. I never hear/notice my alerts when my phone is in my pocket. My fat ass could give a fuck that it monitors my steps and heart rate.
I went from 98Kg to 78Kg simply by eating better and smaller portions.
I still smash a pizza every so often - but I can bring my weight back in days...
exercise... bah
Pay someone to do something and they may do; stop paying and they stop. What's next? Water is wet? Moped Jesus spotted on El Camino Big Num?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Most unfit, unhealthy people are just like my wife, who has been "going to get fit" for literally as long as I've known her (coming up on 20 years). And the scary thing is they actually think they will do it. They actually imagine that they will become one of the healthy fit people who don't sound like a steam train whenever they need to walk up a flight of steps, despite the decades of evidence that what they will actually do is go for maybe a walk or two and eat a salad before going back to sitting on the couch eating pizza at the first flimsy pretext (eg someone at work says something they misinterpret as rude or pretty much any other negative input they can use as an excuse for taking a "night" (week/month/indefinite period) off).
Fitness bands just make them unhappy because they puncture the bubble of self-delusion: they'll stop using them as soon as humanly possible because being made to "feel bad" (aka hitting them with a clue stick) doesn't help. Which is ironically true. Believing a bit of tech will be a magic bullet is simple self delusion.
I'm sure the trackers track people just fine. Are the people who buy the data upset?
Many years ago I worked at a place where they would hand out catalogs to all the employees every holiday season as their "gift" and you could pick out anything you wanted.
Of course there is literally nothing in the catalog that I wanted and it's all cheap junk anyway. So I got a simple pedometer. Nothing fancy, just an LCD showing number of steps. I know I wore it at least one day just out of curiosity but it quickly got put away and forgotten about.
Now I'm actually a bit more than curious about my fitness and if it's a simple arm or ankle band that I didn't have to think about and wasn't uncomfortable that tracked several points of data I think I would wear it until my personal fitness was no longer such a concern to me.
I haven't gotten as far as researching all the available options but the ones I've looked at so far all demand way too many permissions with their apps and there is no way to opt out of sharing the data with them. The only thing an app needs to do is collect the data and display it nicely on the screen and perhaps export it for use by other applications that I choose and control.
I might even willingly opt-in to sharing it but I demand the option to at least opt-out of such sharing.
Or at least give a significant discount on the product for having to share my data which will surely be monetized somehow.
Not a threat. Just the Russian promise to outlive the author who says activity trackers don't work.
Actually, not even a promise, but I think data is good and useful. Definitely imagine that I am healthier for paying attention to it, and also definitely feel it is too soon to draw any conclusions.
I'd like to see some research on whether or not the author wears one. My initial hypothesis is "Hell, no!"
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
The people who want to be involved in fitness already are, and never needed a tracker to do it. Trackers are mostly for people who want to feel like they made some effort without actually making the effort. It's the same deal with exercise bikes and tread mills in homes. They're often purchased and infrequently used.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
This study was done in Singapore. It's well known fact that the Japanese are less inclined to fitness activities, which explains why they are so good at math and violin. For this study to have any real-world relevance it should be done in USA on Americans.
If it weren't for this study, we would have never discovered that people will sometimes do things they otherwise would not if you pay them. The implications are huge! All the world's problems? We can solve them with money! Just pay the necessary people to fix them.
A lot of people have this great idea about getting in shape, becoming healthier and what not. the problem is all the crap they are fed.
Drink this fucking protein shake, eat 6 meals a day, train HIIT, do weights, callisthenics, 3 times a week, 7 grams of protein per ounce, buy this gizmo, use this electrode belt, avoid fat etc etc.
All-of-a-sudden become fit is a research project. You need 10,000 steps a day, people that take stairs have less chance of heart disease and so on and so on.
Guess what most people do? choose the easy fucking way out. Step 1, buy this fitness device (because you'll need it with all the fitness you're gonna do right?!), step 2 follow magic formula??, step 3 get fit
Here's my "magic formula" to get fit: Move your fucking ass. Do whatever workout you want that is COMPOUND movement at the intensity you can SUSTAIN. Listen to your body, if you're feeling depleted take it easy, if you're feeling pumped put your back into it.
It's the same thing with gym memberships after the Olympics, 2-4 weeks later they never come back. No fucking gizmo is gonna lift those weights, run up that hill or do 100 burpees for you. That's you that has to do that. Do it. -remember that when you're watching other fitter people work. (You know, NFL, NBA, Olympics, they're at work)
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
They track a simple concept of fitness very well. Meanings of that data are hotly debated.
I got my FitBit in February, lost 10 pounds (170 to 160) and I still hit my 15k step goal almost every day. I wasn't sure if I would stick with it because I hate wearing watches/jewelry, but so far I'm still going with it.
My biggest gripe is that the thing cost me about $140 and started falling apart about 7 months later. For that price I expect a minimum of 3 years of use. I was able to get a new one because I was within warranty, but obviously that isn't really acceptable IMHO.
I've been following them for some years. The best approach for continuous is not using pressure, but sound and vibrations to calculate the corresponding blood pressure. Several of them have gotten as far as clinical trials, but none of them is in the market yet. I think the main problem is the large size (on the order of a smartphone that you have to strap on).
I think they'll have better luck if they can do it with several smaller devices that communicate with a larger device (perhaps a smartphone that doesn't need to be worn) to correlate the data.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I have wasted 39.4 seconds of my life reading the summary and commenting and burned 1.2 calories.
I think the headline is as valid as the Trumpism with rapist mexican immigrants. There are many different mexican immigrants. There are many kinds of fitness trackers. Open your hearts to the smallest amount of nuance and complexity people. The lack of it in the headline is exactly what we need to fix to Make Slashdot Great Again.
... if people start doing something they didn't used to do, sometimes they don't want to keep doing it? Amazing! Armed with this knowledge, I can finally shave off these mutton chops I grew in the 70s, and give up my paper route.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I have dumb bells that are very good are very good at being gravitationally attracted to the Earth. I, on the other hand, am very lousy at lifting them.
I have a Fitbit that I've owned for barely 10 months. Eight of which it has been sitting in a drawer. I tried to get on board with this craze, but the damn thing kept falling off my wrist. I tried a different side and fared no better. I had two major problems. First, the fastener is utter rubbish. Every time I'd brush against something the damn thing would fall off and most of the time I wouldn't feel it. I'd see it laying on the ground or in a seat before realizing it fell off. Second, I've got enough junk to charge every day. I certainly don't need another device with a proprietary connector. So, in a drawer it sits.
Anybody want to buy a lightly used Fitbit?
better pay. If I could spend money instead of time solving problems in my life my I'd have more time to spend at the gym. So instead of relaxing this weekend I spent it dragging my kid up here from college because I couldn't afford her braces until her year 2 of high school (thanks, 2008 economic crash). If I could have afforded them sooner, no problem. If I could have afforded a car for her that could make the f'n trip, no problem. If I could have had her travel some in her teens in the summer when it didn't matter (because she didn't have to get back for class) before sending her all over state on a bus, no problem.
People's health and wealth are generally one and the same.
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When it's a sole-use device, sure, people are going to bail. Combine it with a watch with a few features THEN do the trial again.
around the neck of Timmy Cook, Chief Crook and Top Queer of Apple.
Most Singaporeans aren't fat fucks to begin with
My employer insists we use a step tracker and hit a minimum number of steps per week in order to qualify for he lowest premium health care plan. Mine remains securely zip-tied to the front forks of th motorcycle that I use for my daily commute.
It seems to me that 90 percent of people will gorge on Cool Ranch Doritos when given the chance, too...that doesn't mean that eating healthy is a flawed proposition.
The fundamental issue is that these trackers were put forth as a magic bullet, with the implicit promise that they will replace willpower, discipline, and self-determination. "Wear our tracker and you'll magically start exercising more and keeping fit," as the implicit promise goes. In truth, they're just another tool...like a jumprope, running shoes, a bicycle, a scale, etc. Having the tool around doesn't mean you will use it correctly. But here's what else is happening: the sales of this tool depend upon keeping the people who buy it happy. So there's a market driver towards devices that overstate activity without doing it to such a degree that you know how much it's lying to you.
Example: Fitbit's products originally were worn on the waist. This way, the activity monitors were actually accurate; they'd measure when you were moving with your whole body, not just your wrist. Now, they're all wrist-worn, and sometimes they think you're exercising when really you're sitting at a bar having two beers. An example of this being so un-subtle as to render the device clearly untrustworthy is the Nike Fuelband, which showed ridiculous amounts of activity in the above-listed scenario. The Fitbit, Withings, and other related devices have slightly better logic but they still false-positive.
So, you get overstated exercise...which makes the wearer feel good (regardless of whether they're really trying or not), but in the long term there's bound to be a bit of "Heyyy..." when clothes don't start getting looser and that number on the scale doesn't really go down much.
These devices are tools, nothing more. There are good ones and bad ones, and both kinds can be used improperly.
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Says guy who won't diet or exercise