Does this mean out 10,000 steps are a lie?
The fitness tracker craze began taking over Australia about three years ago, and has just never stopped.
Aussie spent a whopping $130 million buying 800,000+ fitness bands in 2017 alone.
We’ve all become obsessed with tracking our heart rate, our sleep patterns, and our step count. And, let’s be honest here – who hasn’t run around the house a few times when your 500 steps off your 10,000 goal?
In fact, parents have even begun snapping up the bands for their kids to make sure they’re moving enough throughout the day.
However, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) have doubts about the accuracy of the trackers on children, and have launched a study examining fitness watches made by Fitbit and Garmin.
The study involves strapping medical sensors to kids aged three to five, and comparing their measurements against the trackers.
“(Children) do a lot of sporadic movements, intermittent patterns, and they do a lot of climbing activities, which sometimes monitors aren’t very good at capturing,” Matthew Ahmadi from QUT said.
The results are expected to be released within a few years.
Now, if you’ll excuse us. We have to go run around the office ten times.
Words by Kate Stevens
Images via Unsplash
