About 40% percent of the Dutch population actively monitors one or more health-indicators on a weekly basis (Telecompaper, 2022). Health-indicators can be tracked through applications on your smartphone that include activity-trackers (i.e., counting steps) or dedicated wearable devices that monitor certain behaviors, such as Fitbit devices. These devices are capable of monitoring hearth-rate, diets or fitness-performance and are mostly used by the younger generation (age 18-45)
According to the article by Telecompaper (2022) we see a general trend that the younger generation actively monitors their sleep through such applications, called sleep-trackers. This trend has not gone unnoticed, and markets have played into the consumer’s quest to monitor their sleep intake, especially when academic literature finds that we, on average, lack one hour of sleep every night (the Guardian, 2019). As a result, the market for wearable devices that can monitor one’s sleep has grown to $81 billion. However, these sleep trackers might cause more harm than they do good, as explained by the rise of orthodontia.
Orthodontia refers to the ‘perfectionist quest’ to always have a perfect night’s sleep and can be compared to similar perfectionist habits such as the quest to always eating healthy, causing unhealthy effects (Telecompaper, 2022). As a result, some people tend to get overly fixated on the data that their sleep-tracking devices extract, while that information might not even be accurate. For a longer time, researchers have doubted the accuracy of these sleep tracking devices, and they mention the so-called reverse-development trend of these consumer devices. Normally, we see that consumer wearables stem from the medical world, however sleep-trackers have been fully developed by Tech companies and sold under false claims of accuracy.
The problem is that today’s wearable technology is just not capable of accurately measuring sleep, such as brain activity. However, these devices have been enrolled on a large scale! Therefore, I agree with the articles that I’ve quoted that there is a mismatch between large-scale of use and the actual capability of the sleep tracking devices. In about 10 years’ time, accurate sleep-tracking technology will have arisen from Silicon Valley, and I will reconsider using it!
Telecompaper. (2022). Four out of 10 Dutch people monitor health on their own. Retrieved 2 October 2022, from https://www.telecompaper.com/news/four-out-of-10-dutch-people-monitor-health-on-their-own–1432550
TheGuardian. (2019). Why sleeptrackers could lead to the rise of insomnia – and orthosomnia. Retrieved 2 October from https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jun/17/why-sleeptrackers-could-lead-to-the-rise-of-insomnia-and-orthosomnia
The tile of this blog is very impressive. Good to know the mismatch between the inaccurate data and such as large market. Basically you mentioned those data used for recording sleeping wellness are not that accurate but customers are still willing to buy those products. Did you ever think about the reason behind it? Why people continue to purchase products that are not “useful”? Maybe how can we prevent things like this happening again?