The Quantified Self: How We Track Every Detail with Wearable Devices

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One of the best ways to change a habit or establish a new one is to carefully track your behavior over a period of time. It helps to start with a baseline measure of what your normal behavior is like, and then from that baseline, set goals for yourself over a certain period time. That way, you can make realistic goals without pushing yourself too hard, too fast. 

Until fairly recently, however, it wasn't all that easy to track baseline things about your own body. Nowadays, we are used to having fitness trackers and smart watches and other devices around the house that sync up and help monitor our behavior and well-being. 

20 years ago, that wasn't even remotely possible. 

The Beginning: Pedometers, and That’s It

At the turn of the millennium, you had a couple very limited options for tracking your body. You could get a basic electronic pedometer that tracked your steps and not much else. If you wanted to check your heart rate, you could get yourself hooked up to a heart monitor that strapped to your chest. Otherwise, your best bet was either to feel your own pulse and count against the clock or grip onto one of the sensors on the treadmill or elliptical machine at the gym. 

There were no consumer devices geared toward tracking sleep quality or quantity, metabolic rate, body fat percentage, or any of the other many metrics we use to track our well-being now. 

Garmin Changes the Game

Things began to change when motion sensors and GPS improved. With the advent of consumer GPS, Garmin was able to release its run trackers, watch-like devices that used GPS to monitor where somebody went and how fast they did it. The first Garmin tracker, the aptly-named “Forerunner,” was a pretty primitive-looking gadget, but it did the basics, tracking distance, speed, time, and so forth.

Not long after, movement sensors like accelerometers improved to the point that Fitbit was able to create its first tracker. Back then, the Fitbit was a small device that you wore clipped on to your clothing. It tracked steps, and not much more. 

Technology started changing quickly in the wearables department as Fitbit and other companies began to explore the potential of their devices. They began to track stairs, swim distance, and heart rate. They released linked devices, such as Wi-Fi enabled scales that could measure body fat percentage and send that information to an app on a phone. Sleep trackers begin to emerge and be incorporated into wearable devices. 

And Then Came the Apple Watch

At first, Apple wasn't terribly clear on how the watch would be used. That might be because Apple wasn't entirely sure themselves. At the time it was released, the Apple watch was marketed as a way to quickly check emails, text messages, and notifications from your phone. It also had accelerometers built in so that it could track basic health things like steps, speed, etc. 

With each new iteration of the Apple watch, though, it's become clear that Apple is moving further toward the health-focused wearables sector. That's probably because people are moving away from the constant ping of distracting notifications but want increased amounts of information about their physical well-being. Apple’s latest marketing push has underlined how the Apple watch might be useful for detecting heart problems such as atrial fibrillation. 

In the modern era, the quantified self has reached new levels of personal monitoring and tracking. At the touch of a button, we can see our heart rate over time, our sleep patterns, our metabolic rate, our blood oxygen levels, our temperature, and so much more. It's incredibly helpful for people who are trying to improve their health and take control of their well-being. 

Privacy Concerns Going Forward

But at what cost? Privacy experts have raised alarm bells about the volume and type of data being collected on millions of people by private companies. A few years ago, there was a major security issue when military personnel using the Strava app to track their runs accidentally disclosed the location of their secret military facility in Afghanistan. There are safety concerns for women, too, who are more likely to be stalked or tracked by dangerous entities, enabled by the GPS in their wearable devices. In more speculative circles, many have express concerns about the possibility of health insurance companies making coverage decisions based on wearable device data.

Ultimately, it's up to consumers to decide how much data they want to turn over in pursuit of self-knowledge, but it's also up to the companies to provide relevant safety controls. Privacy settings and anonymized data collection can help mitigate some of the privacy concerns swirling around wearable technology. You have to be mindful of the data that you share, but it is a double edge sword.

We like using wearable technology here at Myrth, but we are cautious about how much data we turn over, and try to limit the collection of too much information in one entity's hands. Still, the relative ease of being able to track ourselves using such simple devices is hard to pass up. 

Do you use a wearable device? How has it affected your lifestyle? Share with us in the comments below.

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