The author reflects on their experience with a smartwatch and the social pressures of fitness tracking, ultimately deciding to discard their device in favor of a more intuitive approach to health and well-being.
The first thing I do each morning is check my watch — not for the time but for my sleep score. As a runner, when the glowing red letters say my score — and my training readiness — are poor, I feel an instant dread. Regardless, I scroll on, inspecting my heart rate variability and stress level — snapshots that influence the tone I carry into the day.
What does dreading my smartwatch’s interpretation of my athletic competence say about me? That I have become a pawn in the gamification of health data. Last year, electronics represented one of the largest proportions of total Black Friday sales, according to Deloitte. That’s when I bought my first smartwatch, a Garmin. This year, I’m throwing it away. I was the perfect target. For several years, I had been preparing to run my first marathon. I watched fitness influencers, ultramarathoners and Olympians optimize their training with meticulous tracking and high-tech devices. I wanted in. I got the watch and joined Strava, a social media network for athletes. Once I had a tracker on, sleep became sacred. I traded late-night socializing for it, confident that I’d cash in on race day. I built my day around my nights, transfixed by a false sense of control over my circadian rhythm. Sleep, just like my running routine, had slowly morphed from a bodily function into a technological token of productivity. I was hooked, emboldened by the illusion that I was training intuitively. I pushed hard when my Garmin nudged me, and even harder when I wanted to prove its metrics wrong. I began to run more for the PR (personal record) badge and “your fastest 5k!” notifications than for mental clarity and solitude. I ran because I loved it, and because I loved it, I fell prey to the Strava-fication of it. Suddenly, I was no longer running for myself. I was running for public consumption. I realized this only when it literally became painfully obviou
TECHNOLOGY HEALTH FITNESS WELL-BEING SOCIAL MEDIA
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