Most smartphones these days come standard with some kind of off-the-shelf fitness application. My iPhone, for instance, tracks my steps and tells me how far I walk each day. If you combine that data with more accurate and updated information from a Fit Bit or a My Fitness Pal app, the accuracy and quantity of data creates a centralized personal database of all your health information. For most people that database is their smartphone, which allows them to actively manage their diet and exercise with the accuracy once available only to professional athletes backed by a team of trainers and nutritionists.
This technology from a public health standpoint has enormous benefits. Our society is increasingly becoming more sedate. Most jobs these days require eight hours of sitting in front of a computer screen rather than even the most basic form of manual labor, and the abundance of readily available food has not helped our society’s drift into unhealthy obesity. Over the last few years, though, being able to calculate daily calorie intake with a few clicks of a smartphone has helped to put a dent, if only a minor one, in the expansion of the world’s waistlines.
There are, of course, drawbacks to having so much information readily available. To my knowledge, fitness apps don’t measure the nutrition value of the food you eat. As with any business or industry, there will be those snake oil salesmen or get-thin-fast scams people will fall victim to. The ease with which communication is disseminated in this day and age makes it far easier for people who are trying to be healthy to be taken in by unscientific, unhealthy diets.
The motivation for peddling such nonsense is explained when you look at the value of the fitness industry. The weight loss and fitness industries combined are estimated to be valued at about $47 billion. Not an insignificant sum by any measure. Forward-thinking firms can use the accessibility and adaptability of wireless technology to get a slice of that pie.
As previously mentioned, My Fitness Pal and a myriad of other apps are already passively assisting customers in their fitness plans. One company named Daily Burn has taken this a step further by offering a subscription-based service that allows customers to do a series of workouts using either their televisions or mobile devices. This is certainly a modernization of the tried-and-true videotape workout industry of the ’80s and ’90s, without the cost overhead of the pre-digital age.
It is becoming clearer each day that our civilization is approaching a point in which the “Internet of Everything” won’t just mean the integration of all of our electronic devices, but the total integration of every aspect of our lives into a digital database. Currently, the mobile fitness business is like so many other mobile businesses in the early stage – it’s the “Model-T version,” if you will. Further down the road, I don’t see it being outside the realm of possibility that our smartphones will be able to monitor every aspect of our physiology, alerting us to the growth of cancer cells or the appearance of blood clots. Some day soon your smartphone, in addition to helping you stay healthy, may save your life.
Jeff Hawn was born in 1991 and represents the “millennial generation,” the people who have spent their entire lives wired and wireless. His adult life has revolved around cellphones, the Internet, video chat and Google. Hawn has a degree in international relations from American University, and has lived and traveled extensively throughout Europe and Russia. He represents the most valuable, but most discerning, market for wireless companies: The people who have never lived without their products, but are fickle and flighty in their loyalty to one company or product. He’ll be sharing his views – and to a certain extent the views of his generation – with RCR Wireless News readers, hoping to bridge the generational divide and let the decision makers know what’s on the mind of this demographic.
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