Health Watches and Scary Futures

Depressing possibilities of Personal Health Monitoring Devices

4 min readNov 15, 2021

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Note : I’ll be making blanket statements along with large generalisations. You may specialise or dispute as required.

Check out the Wikipedia page of antifragility since I’m mentioning it. Also worth reading the book. It deals a lot with modern medicinal practices and situations just like I’m describing.

A picture of big brother watching over a system with a lever and gears. It consists of people exercising and their smartwatch sending data to a database. This is then used to monitor them. — Read the alt text. Right click, inspect element. Double-click the alttext field.

Recently, for an assignment, I was searching for the possible societal advantages and disadvantages of PHMDs or Personal Health Monitoring Devices (Apple Watch and Fitbit). PHMDs continuously monitor a person and provide the following data: Sleep cycle, heart rate, blood oxygen levels, calories burnt and a couple of other medical parameters.

For the advantages I wrote about the possibility of the overall health of society increasing, of the ability to monitor group health and a lot of other stuff. For the disadvantages, I listed the effects of data intrusion and possible mental health issues.

The main problem I encountered when making these lists was one of time, or rather the lack of it. These technologies haven’t been in use for long, and their effects are likely going to be felt a few decades down the line. Just as the effects of excessive social media and the role that they play in shaping modern society (and their incredibly destructive effects) came to be seen almost a decade after they were introduced, I’m incredibly sure that the destructive effects of PHMDs are only going to be seen a few years or decades down the line. However, I shall theorise about possible effects that are possible based on common observation.

Excessive Parenting

This is something I’m almost convinced is going to happen in the future. Given that PHMDs can monitor sleep schedules and calories burnt, we are incredibly likely going to have parents who will excessively monitor the number of hours their child slept, the food they eat and more.

Given that excessive parenting is the norm rather than the exception, especially during the teenage years, it’s pretty scary. We’ll likely have children monitored to the point of abuse.

Increased Self Medication

Given that people are now going to have access to medical data, they’re also likely to self-medicate more whenever they see (or it is pointed out to them) that their data is a bit off.

This is especially true with us, as going to the doctor can be both incredibly time-consuming and expensive (I have a few stories I’ll write about some other time). It's also considered a general hassle, and most people are likely to trivialise the issue.

Already, a significant amount of people self-medicate, so this isn’t an unfounded sentiment.

(I actually did put this in disadvantages, but I didn’t explain it.)

Integration of Applications and Devices

This is one of those things that I’m going to theorise about.

Given the trend of chasing numbers that is present today, it’s almost a certainty that these devices are going to be eventually used for social media integration. Whether existing social media will integrate it or there’ll be new competitors is something that I won’t theorise about, but it’s almost a certainty that the data is going to be used.

I’m not sure if this going to have any adverse health effects like pressurising people to exercise or eat more, but I am sure that advertisements are going to become incredibly more targeted. (I wonder if China is going to be using this for social credit).

Intersection of Employers and Algorithms

This one is actually serious. There are already examples of employers giving these devices to their employees to monitor their activity. Given the insane amounts of data that is likely to be generated, I won’t be surprised if algorithms are created that can tell if an employee is sitting down too often (or something else. Choose your nightmare fuel).

I would advocate for laws against this sort of stuff, but given the state of labour laws in multiple countries (including ours), I wouldn’t hold out too much hope.

A picture of the book antifragility. — Go read this.

However, one of the most interesting things are the possible effects that these devices might have on the overall human body w.r.t the removal of antifragility.

For those of you unacquainted with the idea of antifragility, I shall try to explain it with an example. When you exercise your body, the stress that your body takes helps to make it stronger. Similarly, any system that takes stressors (any type) and becomes stronger is antifragile (contrasted with a glass bowl that breaks under any kind of pressure).

Our body thrives when we are exposed to stressor and stressful situations (physically and mentally).

Just as people who grow up in a sterile environment are very likely to have underdeveloped immune systems, so too might we have a future where disruptions to a schedule or a specific parameter could cascade into worse problems. If everyone ends up excessively monitoring their vitals, then we might end up with an incredibly fragile society.

I suppose the only consolation is that at least the Apple Watch looks cool.