Are Fitness Watches Leading to the Emergence of a Quantified Self?
The impact of wearable technology on society and how it leading to the datafication of the human body.
Fitness tracking watches have become a necessity in the lives of many citizens. Over the past few years, they have significantly grown in popularity as many people desire to have one. The Fitness watch is a form of wearable technology used by healthy and active individuals or those wanting to become healthier. In the beginning, these watches would only track an individual’s steps as they were simply just a more aesthetically pleasing pedometer. Over the years they have evolved to what they have become today. There are various brands that have come out with fitness watches but overall they all accomplish the same goal of providing the user with self-data.
Today the fitness tracker provides the user with their steps, calories, sleep cycle, heart rate and much more. These self-tracking forms of wearable technology provide their users with a variety of data and stats about themselves creating the emergence of the quantified self. Meaning that aspects of everyday life that were typically qualitative are becoming quantitative through data. The self-knowledge and data that wearable technologies such as the fitness watch provide can have a huge impact on their users. This article will explore how the ‘quantified self’ created through fitness trackers is reshaping the meaning of being active and transforming it from individual private action to a public data-filled action.
Although wearable technology seems like all the rage these days it’s actually been around for several decades. There are many examples of wearable technology prior to the 19th century but we saw the first form of modern wearable tech in 1960. In the 1960’s and the 1970’s a wearable technology device was created to help count and make predictions while playing blackjack. However, wearable technology had “its first mainstream moment in 1975, when the Hamilton Watch Company introduced the digital Pulsar watch, which included a built-in calculator” (Bruno, 2015:2). Soon after in the 1980’s a company called Casio created watches that in addition to having a calculator they also could store contacts and track appointments. Today we can see the drastic evolution of wearable technology as many electronic manufacturers are creating their own takes on the smartwatch. There is ongoing growing popularity of these smartwatches but particularly fitness trackers.
A fitness watch is essentially the personal data center of a human. They have various functions from health and fitness to lifestyle. Fitness watches provide their users with their daily step counts, kilometers traveled, calories burnt, heart rate, sleep cycles, and can even track workouts. You can also purchase fitness watches that can make phone calls, receive text messages and play music. It is due to these various functions that many individuals find this form of wearable technology essential to everyday life. But is all this data provided by this wearable technology affecting its users?
Wearable technologies, specifically fitness watches provide their users with the ability to have self-knowledge. From tracking to monitoring the fitness watch gives the user knowledge about their every move. Now humans are knowing themselves through numbers and data points and it is shaping the way they see themselves. Even when we aren’t moving wearable technology is tracking us and it is resulting in a datafication of the human body.
The growing popularity of these data-collecting technologies is shaping people’s everyday lives. Now people are looking at their lives differently paying more attention to data that is influencing them to act in certain ways. Thus changing the meaning of being active and healthy from a private activity that you do by yourself, to a public activity being swallowed up by data and sharing. In other words, fitness watches are changing “qualitative aspects of life into quantified data” (Ruckenstein, 2017:262). We can look at usual qualitative activities turning into quantitative data in terms of socialization.
The social allows for what used to be a private qualitative activity of working out to be transformed into data to be shared online. Through competitions against others and sharing goals, the fitness watch has reshaped the meaning of being active. One specific example of a fitness watch that is socializing fitness is the Fitbit. Just like other fitness watches the Fitbit has a corresponding app. On the app, you are able to add your friends, have step competitions, share your results and motivate others. This app is very similar to any other social media app. Through this app “fitness becomes a competition, and in order to beat one’s friends, one must tether the technology to the body at all times. Moreover, users can share data with larger friend pools and, ideally, receive more feedback to further their motivation” (Gilmour,2016:2533). This brings up many concerns of why people are being active. Are users going for a long walk for their own personal health or because you want to beat their friends? There is another part of fitness watch apps that allow you to track your workout on a map. You can track your run, walk, or bike and see the satellite map along with all the data. Before the fitness watch, people would go out for their daily run then come home and go on with their day. Now fitness watches have made their users track their workouts then post them for everyone to see. Furthermore, the way that active lifestyles are being socialized can also be looked at through gamification.
Nike+ is an application that can connect to various forms of wearable technologies, specifically the apple watch. Nike+ looks at running as a game, as the more kilometers you run you can level up. In addition, it also has coaches that will talk to you as you run. Jennifer Whiteson argues that these kinds of apps are adding “society to the otherwise solitary process of running” (Whiteson,2013:171). Activities are now being quantified not only through your personal steps but now through tracking your activities in terms of a game. Overall, here we are seeing the socialization that occurs through the online applications associated with fitness watches. This is emphasizing the shift from working out being a solo, qualitative activity to a public and quantitative activity.
In conclusion, it is evident that the concept of being active is shifting. Through all the statistics fitness watches are generating it is leading to the quantified self through the datafication of the human body. As fitness watches are combining the material to the social world it is redefining the meaning of working out from an individual activity to a social activity done for social media. This new generation is obsessed with the idea of self-knowledge as they can now receive data about all aspects of their active lives. As wearable technologies and fitness trackers continue to innovate and grow it is leading to the emergence of a quantitative society made up of data-filled people.
