As Sara Suisman walks across campus to class she notices that she hasn’t felt the familiar buzz on her left wrist.
“Oh I haven’t hit the goal yet,” she thinks to herself. “I should go work out.”
Suisman, an IU freshman, is one of the many people who own a fitness-tracking device such as the Fitbit.
“I think it makes me more conscious of how active I am during the day,” Suisman said. “Because if I weren’t to use it I wouldn’t really think about ‘oh I could walk here instead of taking the bus.’”
A research study by NPD Connected Intelligence found there was a 4 percent increase in ownership of wearable activity trackers during the 2015 holiday season with Fitbit seeing a 13 percent increase since February 2015. A press release from Fitbit said the company sold 4.5 million devices in their second quarter of 2015.
The rapid development in activity tracking technology and the surge in popularity of fitness apps, wearable trackers and smart watches leads one to wonder if these devices hold some secret to success. Does wearing a tracking device compel you to work out more?
Professor of practice Jeffrey Huber of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at IU said that if anything, the Fitbit is great at giving people a nudge to get up and exercise.
An IU diving coach for the last 24 years and 3-time Olympic coach specialized in cognition and motor performance, Huber said from a behavioral psychology perspective, there are certain aspects of motivational feedback with such tracking devices.
“Feedback is huge in everything you do,” Huber said. “So I can see that there’s some feedback (with the Fitbit), where you do some exercise, you look and you see some points and there’s a little bit of reward in that.”
Huber noted sometimes people are not always accurate in gauging how much exercise they need or get on a regular basis.
“Sometimes we can be really terrible at evaluating ourselves and our progress,” Huber said.
Performance tracking tools and the feedback users receive on the amount or lack of their physical activity could help them get a more realistic understanding of their progress.
Allison Gruber, an assistant professor in the biomechanics laboratory within the School of Public Health, uses Fitbits in her research to help track runners over time and monitor their activity levels.
A Fitbit user herself, Gruber noted from personal observation that she could see some aspect of motivation behind wearing the wristband.
“Setting the goals, and some of the awards and badges you can earn, might help people to try to get that extra 20 minutes,” Gruber said. “I like seeing that reward, that little green bar. Seeing that all my daily goals are green definitely makes me feel some bit of satisfaction from that, so maybe that little bit of reinforcement gets me to do that extra set of stairs.”
From a social psychological perspective, Huber noted that putting the Fitbit on is a commitment in that it says something to other people, or that others may see it and talk about it with one another.
“You look down at it and it’s kind of a reminder,” Huber said.
But Huber clarified that ultimately the key to progress lies within the individual and their decision to actually get up and get active.
“Just putting the Fitbit on may give you that nudge, but ultimately you have to find the motivation to (exercise),” Huber said. “And that’s not going to come from the Fitbit, that comes from you and making some life changes.”
For Suisman, who got her Fitbit a year ago and occasionally wore it, she said she has started using her Fitbit more since coming to IU because of all the walking she does around campus.
“It’s really cool, especially because I never really realized how many steps I take in a day,” Suisman said.
