Study blasts fitness trackers’ ability to boost health
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Work on your willpower instead.
By Natasha Hinde
A study has found that fitness trackers might not benefit health after all.
Researchers discovered that regular use of a fitness tracker or pedometer did not increase activity levels enough to benefit health – even when a financial reward was involved.
It’s not the first study to suggest that fitness trackers are not all they’re cracked up to be, research published in September found that fitness devices didn’t help people lose weight.
A randomised trial involving 800 full-time workers aged 21 to 65 found that, over the course of the year, volunteers who wore activity trackers recorded no change in their step count.
They did, however, moderately increase their amount of aerobic activity by an average of 16 minutes per week.
Cash incentives helped increase exercise levels at six months, but not enough to benefit health. Meanwhile 90% of participants stopped using the devices once incentives stopped.
“We found no evidence that the devic...
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