Yes, Your Smartwatch Changes How You Think About Your Health
Why that should make you reconsider wearing one
The New York Times recently ran an op-ed by opinion editor Lindsay Crouse titled, I Ditched My Smart Watch and I Don’t Regret It. It begins with Crouse examining her relationship with her smartwatch — its transformation from helpful marathon partner into dependency-fueling symbiote — and then dives into the ensuing question: are wearable health and fitness trackers really making us more healthy?
As you may have guessed from the title of her piece, Crouse leans toward “no.”
Her argument is that the relentless stat checking the watch induces eventually supplants an intuitive sense of health and fitness. Basically, fitness trackers replace awareness of our physical and mental states with a number — one that many people feel compelled to optimize and compare with others.
I find this to be a pretty compelling take, and anyone who has checked a weather app instead of looking outside can probably appreciate the way a device can alter how we perceive and engage with the world around us.
It’s just, do we have to keep doing this?
This type of article — wherein the writer tells us about some sort of activity or product they became dependent on…
