Pro – by Sage Rosskopf

Efficiency is vital in today’s fast-paced society, and nothing enables it better than personal wearable fitness trackers. Products such as Apple Watches or smart rings surged in popularity since their first appearance on the market in 2015. These devices include a variety of features that allow the watch to set fitness goals and track personal health while detecting emergency situations. Smart phones are bulky burdens while wearable technologies allow people to workout and live life comfortably while being aware of their safety.

Starting workouts is always a struggle, especially when there are no expectations or obligations to exercise. Personal trainers and gym memberships are expensive, but these options are effective reminders, typically ensuring that the customer will show up to get their money’s worth. In principle, one could get the same quality of workout at home or in nature for no cost. Stairs could replace stairmasters. Trails could replace ellipticals. Even furniture could replace weights. The reason that most overlook this option is the lack of incentive that comes with it. 

This can be a reality with the use of wearable fitness devices. For example, an Apple Watch, unlike gym memberships, is a one-and-done investment that provides the same incentives to work out but come with a sliver of the price. One can create a goal of how many calories they want to burn or how many steps they want to take in a day, and the watch will track it. Notifications about the goals pop up not only to remind users, but also to instill an intrinsically competitive drive that will push them to reach the target. Wearable devices highlight goal streaks which increase a sense of accomplishment and the desire to exercise daily. These streaks help build habits, and after some time, the habits become second nature. Thus begins consistent workout patterns and progress. 

Furthermore, many people are uneducated on the quantity and type of exercise that will help them reach their goals. Bettering stamina or strengthening muscles require different kinds of exercise and the process does not just entail going for runs or lifting weights. Personal devices offer various work outs types to track and to afterward show the physical benefits from each one. Many people are eager to start their fitness journeys but at a loss for how to start. Apple Watches and similar technologies simplify the daunting task.

Beyond exercise, fitness trackers are crucial for tracking health. Something so easy to have on at all times can be the difference between life and death. CBS News reported that in February of 2024, 73-year-old, Frank Haggerty was sleeping when an alarm went off on his apple watch telling him his heart rate was too far below the average pulse. He had not felt any symptoms prior, but was rushed to the hospital and the watch ultimately saved his life. 

In addition to tracking heart rate, wearable devices also include fall and car crash detection. If an accident occurs, a pop-up will appear with the SOS Emergency Call button so that all it takes is one touch of a finger to alert paramedics. After car crashes, it is common for victims to be in trapped positions, unable to reach a phone or method of communication, but wearable devices erase this risk. 

A healthy lifestyle and a life itself are well worth the cost of wearable fitness technologies. These efficient devices offer much more than accessories while still being fashionable, light-weight and easy to wear and use. Smart watches and rings let people go about life free of the burden of monitoring fitness statistics and health so that they can spend more time actually living rather than tracking.

Con – by Emily Chao

As concerns regarding personal health and wellness gain traction, so has the market of wearable fitness technology. These commercial products, ranging from watches to glasses and rings, have rapidly populated the health and fitness business sector, with the renowned FitBit and Apple Watch standing at the forefront of these advancements. At a first glance, this technology seems like the ideal solution to improve physical condition and meet health goals. However, beneath the surface, a myriad of concerns revolving around ineffectiveness, accuracy, cost and privacy poke holes in the seemingly sound technology, which threaten to undermine the purpose of personal fitness trackers. 

Let us start with the primary goal of these gadgets for those overweight or obese: weight loss. A study by the Journal of the American Medical Association measured this impact, showing that over a two year course, personal fitness trackers were actually less effective in aiding weight loss, compared to following a simple diet and exercise plan. According to the researchers, the devices provided the participants a “false sense of security” that led them to be “overly dependent on the gadgets.” While still achieving a net weight loss in the duration of the study, researchers proved that personal fitness trackers do not carry the same effectiveness that their commercial advertising causes us to believe. 

In addition to the issue of ineffectiveness, many common wearable fitness devices have questionable accuracy. A 2022 study published by the National Institutes of Health found that fitness trackers have 76.35% accuracy when measuring heart rate. Even worse, these devices only have an accuracy rate of 68.75% and 56.63% for tracking step count and energy expenditure, with an average of 67% across all metrics. This average accuracy is shockingly low, especially when the prices of such devices can range from $150 to $1,900, in addition to regular monthly subscription payments for the software that can substantially build up over time. Are you really willing to pay such a steep cost for unpredictable accuracy?

Proponents of wearable fitness technology promote the perceived convenience and tech-savvy nature of these devices that they claim brings seemingly unattainable goals of personal fitness within reach. “You can’t improve what you can’t measure,” they argue. However, if the research described above proves that this technology cannot be dependably relied upon for accurate measurements, it is easy to respond that “you can’t improve when your measurements are wrong.”

In addition to consumer issues, another major concern of the product is lack of privacy, with regard to wearable fitness companies selling private health data to third party services. Monitoring everything from steps taken, calories burned, heart rate, sleep patterns, blood oxygen levels, temperature and even stress, these devices store a vast amount of personal data of high sensitivity.

According to an article by Brown University Center for Digital Health, high-profile wearable fitness technology companies have been involved in several scandals involving data privacy and protection. In 2011, FitBit faced a lawsuit over an alleged sale of consumer data without consent. In 2018, Strava, a fitness tracking app that allows users to track and share workout routines cinadvertently revealed the locations of military bases and personnel around the world.” Clearly, there is a level of obscurity over the degree of control that these major corporations have over our personal, sensitive data, which should not be ignored.

To a similar extent, Ōura Ring, a company that manufactures rings that tracks key biometrics for personal health and fitness, has partnered with the Department of Defense to monitor stress, fatigue and recovery in military troops. This has sparked public backlash over ethical concerns regarding how their own personal data may be accessed by the government. Ōura has stated that consumer “data is not for sale, and [that they] will never sell or rent [personal] health data, including to the government.” However, all it takes is one “Change in Privacy and Security Agreement” email that the large majority of consumers would never bother to open let alone read, and user privacy is fatally compromised.

Advances in this fitness technology have rapidly accelerated, but so has the number of corners cut to achieve this rampant popularity. Ineffectiveness, inaccuracy, high expenses and privacy issues are products of this system, and have quickly perpetuated the wearable fitness technology sector, leaving the consumer to grapple with the repercussions.