" Looking after our overall health and wellbeing is part of the wider basic human need to preserve and protect all of those things we hold most dear to us in life."
Mike Preston
The ‘Fitbit fad’ previously foreseen to be sweeping the nation in 2017 appears to have become a firm reality over 26% of Brits surveyed admitted to owning a fitness tracker of some kind, and 34% of owners claiming to wear theirs seven days a week.
New research conducted on behalf of Compare Cover, the life insurance comparison website, also shows around a third of us are willing to spend up to £200 on our exercise tracker in a bid to improve our fitness levels.
Residents based in London, are mainly using theirs to monitor sleep patterns, however, whilst those based in Northern Ireland are most likely to use theirs in a bid to aid weight loss over anything else.
Compare Cover’s Business Development Director, Mike Preston, said: “It’s interesting to see that, where advances in gaming and technology have previously been blamed for decreases in physical activity, the availability of fitness-based digital solutions seems now to be supporting a wide demographic in achieving their chosen goals physically.
“Contrary to wider discussions around fitness trackers and their popularity emerging merely as a passing phase, our study appears to show that consumers of all ages - and on a fairly large scale - have firmly incorporated the benefits wearable fitness technology could bring into their daily lives.”
Compare Cover, which has been helping people with their insurance needs since 1999, found that in the UK the Fitbit brand is still a runaway favourite. More than 26% of respondents chose the Fitbit Charge compared to almost 15% who opted for the next most popular model, the Samsung Gear.
Consumers aged 18 to 24 admitted to changing the model they own more frequently than anyone else – with 16% claiming to upgrade or switch their tracker more often than every three months. -. Those in the same age bracket were also the most likely to use their tracker purely as a fashion accessory and also had the highest rate of respondents (more than 13%) who admitted to owning a fitness tracker but never actually wearing it.
Investment in wearable fitness technology was otherwise highest among 25 to 34-year-olds, with more than a third (37%) happy to spend between £100 - £200 on their chosen tracker, while the over 55s were most likely to wear theirs every single day, with over 39% within this age bracket claiming to do so.
Even though the overall split of ownership was equal between men and women, almost half of men (49%) buy a new fitness tracker because they want the latest model, or when there is new functionality available, compared with just over a quarter (27%) of women.
Mike added: “Looking after our overall health and wellbeing is part of the wider basic human need to preserve and protect all of those things we hold most dear to us in life, with the strength in fitness tracker figures seen here supportive of this.
“Safeguarding ourselves and our loved ones against future complications manifests itself in so many different ways, and is also one of the reasons insurance cover is now so widely accessible in a huge variety of different disciplines thanks to ongoing technological developments emerging generally, as well as in the fitness market.”
Compare Cover has produced an infographic about the “4 Ws of Fitness Tracking”.
