The Craze for Steps — How the fitness tracker has taken over our lifestyle

One could have never imagined the step craze that has taken over life on our planet in the past few years. Since Homo Erectus set foot on our planet this has got to be the most step crazy generation. One can imagine when men first learned to walk erect, they started counting their steps to prove out their new found skill.

What we are doing now is quite different? Our current craze is being driven by the fitness trackers that have now become ubiquitous in our homes and workplace over the last decade. They are even attempting to take over our ornamental time piece that has adorned many a wrist for centuries.

Have we all become so conscious of our fitness that we find it necessary to track our every step? Or, has the health insurance industry successfully manipulated us all into a frenzy, thinking that more steps means better health and a longer life. I think it’s more the latter, and we have all taken the bait — hook, line and sinker.

Being active should make us more alive and oxygenated but creating an incentive for getting more steps does not necessarily imply we will sustainably change our lifestyle. When insurances companies dangled the carrot of reduced rates to employers if they got their employees wearing a tracker; it was an easy choice to make. With millions saved, and little additional cost other than a subsidized tracker it was clearly a win-win proposition.

Thus was born the fitness tracker industry which until then was in its infancy, a glorified pedometer at best. Everyone at work now has one, and steps have become part of our daily conversation. We even get invited for weekly challenges with our co-workers, friends, family members, etc. Whether we want to be fit or not, our competitive spirit has made us want to best our co-worker(s) or spouse or friend or family member. If not every day, atleast by the end of the week. We each have our tricks too. Wait till the end of the day before we sync. Or go out for the extra long late night walk making those extra rounds till you are far ahead. Wear the tracker on our hand while doing dishes or ironing your clothes or pulling weeds in the garden. Some even get more creative, letting their tracker take a tumble with their clothes in the dryer or tying it to theirs dogs collar and letting it go out for a run.

Now how has all that really improved our health. Not having hit your target steps weighs on our mind in addition to all else we have to worry. We then set out to get those steps like any another task. It then stops being a physical activity but just another chore for us to complete. Not a good use of our time.

Of course there also the hidden issues with these fitness trackers which now have started tracking your sleep. Wait till our employers get hold of that data. Already sleep data on athletes is being incorporated in determining their performance. So it is possible that a basketball player might get less playing time because they slept less. Now you can extrapolate that to performance on any job. What if McDonalds decides to pay 25% less because you showed up to work with 6 hours of sleep. Some data scientists has crunched your productivity days to determine that you are lot less productive when you have had 2 hours less sleep.

Do we all need this intrusion into our lives and lifestyle. Why can’t we just learn to be healthy without having to wear s fitness tracker. Eating healthy, breathing fresh air having stable relationships are the road to good health not wearing a fitness tracker.

(If you liked reading my points of view, you may like to read my other recent blogs on Culture, Relationships, Prayer, Writing, Condolences)