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What to do with that Fitbit that's just sitting in your drawer mocking you
By adamg on Sat, 11/28/2015 - 10:48am
Lisa Gualtieri, a public-health professor at Tufts Medical School, has organized an effort to collect "wearable activity trackers" to donate to a YMCA in Fitchburg for folks who can't afford one but who could really use one.
Read more in this MobiHealthNews report.
Via Paul Levy.
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Comments
ShitBit
My Fitbit is sitting in the drawer only until I find a way to dispose/recycle it properly.
The thing stopped working.
Mine isn't mocking me
It can't. It is dead, too. They only last about a year.
Now, if they could get their technical high school electronics types to get them to work, I'd hand it over in a heartbeat.
Meh
I've had mine on 24/7 for almost a year and it's working fine.
Hope you get a new one for Christmas.
Just sayin...
meh
I guess (I know) I'm a grump, but this strikes me as charity that will make the donor feel better than the recipient. Are older and lower-income folks at the Fitchburg YMCA really clamoring for activity trackers? Have they indicated that they're any less likely to chuck the thing in a drawer than their wealthier benefactors? I mean, maybe, but I would have thought there were more effective ways to improve health among "underserved" populations than patting oneself on the back for giving away an expensive piece of trash.
It's the thought that counts, I suppose.
Da Beetis
These are for seniors who are trying to take care of themselves, and need the feedback. Doctors recommend that they get activity trackers to make sure that they are moving enough if they have da beetis.
Stop your sugar-coating,
Stop your sugar-coating, Wilford.
Sugar Coating in this case...
...is the right thing to do.
I get the intention behind it
I'm just not all that sure that this do-gooding will do any real good. I know my diabetic grandmother would find a FitBit to be a confusing pain in the proverbial, and would rather just manage it as she's been managing it for the past however many decades. That's just my grandmother, though.
It needn't be confusing
My parents are part of a program that sounds similar. They just drop their FitBits in their pockets when they dress in the morning and go on with their days. Because they have regular contact with the healthcare community (at least once per week between them), the FitBits get synced by various paraprofessionals, and periodically someone shows them a multicolored chart of how many steps they're getting every day and either tells them "good job" or "you've slackened off a bit recently."
The hardest part for them is they have to remember to charge them once a week, but they're already trained to do stuff like that with other gadgetry. The only thing we had to do to make it easier for them was put a daub of lurid orange nail polish on the FitBit that lines up with another daub on the charger, so it's easy for their 90 year old eyes to see how it's lined up.
Two things...
My Fitbit Flex died a couple of months after I got it and when I complained, they replaced it no questions, no charge. The main problem is the wristbands, which rip easily from taking the tracker out to charge it.
It's clear from Paul Levy's blog that the trackers are being collected for people who are part of a fitness program and who have requested them. I don't think that they'll be lying around.
Trade it in for an Apple
Trade it in for an Apple Watch!