Fitness Trackers Changed My Life

Fitness Trackers Changed My Life

- Victoria Song

My morning routine has an extra step now. Before I shower, I take off anywhere between one and six wearable devices. I hold out my arms and inspect the imprints they leave on my skin—long, angry, watch shaped marks. When your bread and butter is reviewing fitness trackers, as I do for PCMag, I suppose you could say this is an occupational hazard.

It doesn’t matter that wearables are increasingly becoming showerproof. Unless I’m testing how they hold up against water, I like to think there are at least fifteen minutes in a day when my body is not quantified.

These days, Fitbits and their ilk can track almost anything—from what time you go to bed to how quickly your heart beats when you’re running to your next appointment. Some, like the Garmin Vivosmart 3, claim their algorithms can measure how stressed you are. Wear one tracker for a month, and you’ll have a decent chunk of data that says something about who you are.

But the same questions about wearables have persisted since the technology first debuted: Does this data actually help you in any way? Is your fitness tracker a useful tool on your path to wellness or just tech-justified navel gazing? Opinions and study results range widely, and we still have no definitive answers.

But in my first year of testing them, wearables have had some unexpected effects on me—some vaguely negative, some neutral, and a couple positive experiences that made me rethink my life. My year in wearables might not answer any of the big questions, but it might offer some insight into the future potential these gadgets contain.

THE IDEAL OF THE QUANTIFIED SELF

How well do you know yourself?