It all starts with curiosity. It is, after all, a thing so powerful that it was rumored to have defeated a creature of no fewer than nine lives. Being mere mortals (with just the one life), we are obviously in no position to mount any sort of defense against it. So, we give in. And we bring home (or, more likely, have sent to us) another electronic device to take over our lives — I mean to make our lives easier. And once it has us in its cold, battery-operated clutches, our existence is never the same. Or ours, really, anymore. Trained like the inferior technology we are, we respond to every beep, buzz, sudden change of color or light, or hieroglyphics that pop up to alert us to the latest update our tiny electronic overlords want us to pay attention to. And we give them the power (so to speak) without a second thought. And soon we can’t take a single step without the little control freaks. Literally. Not a single step. 

Welcome to the Era of the Fitbit (replace name with brand of fitness tracker that ensnared you). Where once we felt free to wander the world unaware of how many steps it took us to walk from the bedroom to the bathroom—and oddly we didn’t feel a great emptiness caused by the lack of said facts—today we don’t get out of bed before putting the little tracker on. Some of us even sleep in ours, given that it helps us to be painfully aware of how little sleep we actually get. It even analyzes the quality of the sleep for you. It’s not enough that you’re tired and can’t seem to catch up on sleep, but now you have the added stress of having your wrist buddy break down for you where exactly you’re going wrong. You can almost hear his frat boy/surfer dude-meets New Age guru voice: “Oh, see, here. Here’s where you didn’t spend enough time in deep sleep, which was actually followed by a pretty weak showing in light sleep too. I gotta be honest with you, it’s not looking good for your overall sleep score tonight.” 

So, not only did you not reach your goal steps for the day (“9 out of 14 hours is all you could manage in getting over the suggested minimum of 250 steps an hour?!”), but now you’re letting him down in the sleep department, too. You know tomorrow you’re going to have to do something special to make up for this 4K day (“Seriously? That’s less than your average walk for some cause or other”), like go the long way to the mailbox, or make a few loops around the car before getting in. That is unless you actually have time to, you know, go for a walk. 

But the absolute worst is if you forget it at home, or you forgot to charge it and have to leave it behind, fully aware of what you’re doing. There is no making up those steps. They just don’t count. You might have gone on an actual in-nature, uphill-at-least-part-of-the-way-hike and it’s like it never happened. You’ve thrown off your weekly total, your daily average is shot, the friendly competition you have with your wife over the number one ranking (sent in a taunting, automated email reporting the stats for the week) is at risk. There’s nothing you can do. You might as well have stayed home and watched Netflix all day; it literally would have had the same effect (well, other than on your physical and mental well-being). You tell yourself you’ll never forget to charge it again and you’ll keep it on your wrist all other times. You’ll set reminders and alarms and allow it all to send you notifications. And you’ll never, ever go anywhere without it again. Because you know without the acknowledgment of your fitness tracker there is no point to moving.