have there been any studies correlating overall fitness with the continued wearing of Fitbit or the Apple Watch or other such trackers? Were there any caveats?
In: Biology
There have been many tests on how accurate the trackers are. The trackers don’t do anything by themselves. You don’t need a tracker to exercise.
I’m not sure what kind of study you’re looking for. Studies are typically done to test the effectiveness of X.
Take 10 random people who want to get in shape. Have 5 of them wear a tracker and 5 don’t. The results will be based on the effectiveness of their exercise routine, not on anything the tracker is doing.
Here is a meta-analysis (combining data from multiple studies to try and analyze greater patterns) on whether wearing a tracker can affect your overall health.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7407266/
It says that while those who wore a tracker showed a tendency towards more physical activity, they did not necessarily lose weight or increase their total fitness.
Of course there’s a huge amount of variability in the results for individual people. I’m sure that there are plenty who used a fitness tracker in addition to regular exercise or a weight loss plan to track their progress. And plenty of people who bought a tracker and made no changes, staying at the same level of fitness or even gaining weight.
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