Scientists from the University of Liege in Belgium have found that using fitness bracelets and smart watches to track your physical activity and overall health can be detrimental to your psyche. The study results were published in the Journal of Consumer Affairs (JCA).
The study involved 30 people who actively use fitness bracelets and apps to track their physical activity and general health. The subjects pursued a variety of goals, from losing weight to increasing productivity to developing healthy habits.
The level of user engagement with devices varied widely. Some respondents experienced an increase in interest in trackers that later became stable, while for others, interest declined over time after initial enthusiasm. However, the most alarming thing was that among the total number of volunteers, a group of users had formed whose passion for a healthy lifestyle had grown into an obsession.
These people spent an inordinate amount of time and effort studying their health data and striving to achieve “ideal” mobility scores. According to scientists, this behavior had a negative impact on overall health – stress from excessive attention to data played a key role in the deterioration of well-being.
Users began to perceive information from trackers as reliable, ignoring possible errors in measurements. This created an obsessive desire to achieve certain health and fitness goals as quickly as possible, which, contrary to the original goal, was detrimental to their well-being.
