Technology that counts the steps you take, measures your heartbeat, or beeps when you’ve sat down for too long. Is this supportive technology really helping us?

Feedback

Health-trackers like the Fitbit, Garmin fitness watch, Oura ring, and certain features on your Apple watch are supportive technologies meant to help you become a healthier version of you. In eHealth, such devices are often aimed at (future) patients of cardiovascular disease or diabetes type 2. Also known as "lifestyle diseases," they are greatly influenced by our own behaviour. The support of the technology is based on measuring something and providing these metrics as feedback that we did not have before. It gives us insight into our own behaviour. We can see where we started, where we are now, and how close we are to a goal that we ourselves have set. These are three essential points of feedback we need to experience a sense of progress. Through technology we are better supporting ourselves.

Effect

But is this enough? To make a difference in our lives we need sustained behaviour change: a habit. Forming new habits is hard, but once achieved habits are easy to maintain. There is often a peak of interaction with supportive technology — and the resulting desired behaviour — when everything is new. The technology and the feedback it provides spark a new interest and awareness of our own behaviour and progress metrics keep us engaged. Then most people plateau somewhere. The metrics are no longer motivating, and we dip back to our old behaviour. Most of the new behaviour that comes from supportive technology does not make it into a habit. We might expect more successful habit formation when we combine the power of social collaboration with the metrics of supportive technology. You can do (part of) your desired behaviour together and share metrics of how you are doing. I often do part of my 10,000 steps a day with my partner, and we high-five when my wrist vibrates to tell me my goal is achieved.

Supportive technology for a new you

Data

The collected metrics that drive our engagement form an intimate set of data, making security and privacy very real concerns. It also raises questions on who should have access to your fit data. In one project I worked on, a health insurance company intended to provide a discount based on your fit scores. But this creates a higher premium for people who are less fit or do not want to use such technologies. And what happens to your premium when you plateau? Luckily, legislation in my country does not allow for such "discounts," but things are not so clear in other countries. When your employer gifts you supportive technology as part of a worker health program, does that give them any rights to the data? I don’t think so.

The metrics that supportive technologies provide by sensing and computing can be very valuable. It provides new insight into our own behaviour and can be a great support to shape ourselves as we want. But we need more than technological support.

Priscilla Haring-Kuipers writes about technology from a social science perspective. She is especially interested in technology supporting the good in humanity and a firm believer in effect research. She has an MSc in Media Psychology and makes This Is Not Rocket Science happen. Haring-Kuipers was a panelist at the 2021 World Ethical Electronics Forum.

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More on Supportive Technology 

Want to read more about supportive technology? Curious about the ethics associated with some of the other topics covered in this article, like data rights? Check out the following resources.