Trackers for kids? Depends on child

Tom Sawyer, that always useful icon of American boyhood, certainly did not need a fitness tracker; no point counting his steps, or checking his heart rate at particularly exciting moments. In his quest for adventure, he "gamified" his own life, as we now say, but it did not require gadgets.

But fitness trackers and wearable devices are big business, and parents tend to hover, fascinated by the details of their children's lives. So it is not surprising that there is interest in fitness trackers as potentially useful tools for children struggling with weight problems, or for families trying to build more physical activity into their screen-filled lives, or as just one more set of cool electronic toys.

Fitness trackers, like other online tools, raise questions about data security and self-image. And like adults, individual children and adolescents vary in how they react to wearable devices.

"There's the device, but probably more important is what the person wearing the device brings into the equation," said Dr. Megan Moreno, an associate professor of pediatrics and health services at the University of Washington in Seattle, who studies the ways children and adolescents use technology.

In a study of middle school and high school students who were given wearable fitness trackers, many

loved them, Moreno said, and rose to the challenge of "winning the day" by taking 10,000 steps. Others stopped using the devices, she said, because they made physical activity a burden.

"They would stress out about it if they didn't have gym that day or they had a lot of homework and they didn't win -- they felt bad about themselves."

And then there were the children who used the devices for a while and simply got bored with them.

Even among adults, who have proved a ready market for fitness trackers, there seems to be a great deal of attrition. However, for many adults, there is at least interest in the idea of quantifying your activity, your sleep, your caloric intake.

The risk is that children would be discouraged by the information and that continual updates about how they are doing paradoxically make them feel less able to change their own stories.

"Some people are motivated, 'I see how I'm not doing so well, so I need to walk more,'" said Amanda Lenhart, a researcher at the Data and Society Research Institute in New York. "Other people see, 'I'm never going to catch up to my sister, so I'm just going to sit here.'"

Trackers record sophisticated data about your body as it steps through daily life. But where is that data stored? And who owns the information? And does it count as medical information, subject to all the special protections afforded by federal law?

Fitness trackers often communicate with other devices including computers and smartphones, and they store data on their company servers. What they collect -- and store -- is not treated as protected health information, and there are concerns that it could make its way to marketers -- or to insurance companies.

"Parents should definitely be aware that the companies that market these devices are not subject to the rules that they think of as governing health information," said Lindsay Wiley, an associate professor at the Washington College of Law at American University, who works on the intersection of public health and law. "There's nothing to stop the company from selling it, and marketers can find it very valuable."

Michelle De Mooy, the deputy director of consumer privacy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit advocacy organization based in Washington, says there are always special concerns when children are using products designed for adults.

"There are a lot of restrictions around advertising to kids -- when you give a kid an adult product, those are gone," she said. "You might start getting things for obesity," she added, referring to ads, "things that would be fine for an adult to get -- not so fine for a kid."

The message for parents is to pay attention to their children's needs and preferences.

ActiveStyle on 11/23/2015

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