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The Impact of Coronavirus on Global Activity

blog.fitbit.com

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Re: The Impact of Coronavirus on Global Activity

#21

Post by mattlondon »

Anecdotally, the only people I know in the UK who wear fitbits these days are retirees.

I have seen a huge increase in the number of people out and about running. Perhaps they all ran on treadmills at the gym before (we are permitted to leave the house once a day for a run/walk/cycle), but from my anecdata I've seen perhaps a 5x to 10x increase in other runners out when I am running in London so a drop in activity does not tally with my personal and limited observations.

It would not surprise me one jot to see that retirees (i.e. those most vulnerable to corvid) are not out and moving around as much.

Re: The Impact of Coronavirus on Global Activity

#23

Post by baby »

cs02rm0 wrote: post #18

Personally my time spent exercising has increased. I'm working from home, without spending hours a day commuting and I'm allowed to exercise outside in the UK so every few days I run 5 miles. I wonder if the trends are hiding larger swings in both directions.

Same here. We discovered that we have a park 5min walk from home so we go there every day to play tennis and badminton.

Re: The Impact of Coronavirus on Global Activity

#24

Post by dimtion »

vilen wrote: post #19

As an athlete, I'm not surprised by these results. Most people are sedentary and step counting only goes so far to improve their health. Even in Italy, as shown in the article's graph, the decline has been 25%. If the recommended goal 10,000 steps per day then 7,500 is still a good number to hit during a pandemic.

I would be very surprised that the average number of steps across their userbase has uniformly decreased for all users.

For example we could imagine the scenario where some people were able to keep their habit and did not have a great decrease in step numbers, while some other sub-groups have become sedentary because of the confinement. This would show up as an increase in variance in the number of steps.

Stats are hard and it is very easy to draw a wrong conclusion (that sound right) from aggregated data.

Re: The Impact of Coronavirus on Global Activity

#25

Post by [deleted] »

mattlondon wrote: post #21

Anecdotally, the only people I know in the UK who wear fitbits these days are retirees. I have seen a huge increase in the number of people out and about running. Perhaps they all ran on treadmills at the gym before (we are permitted to leave the house once a day for a run/walk/cycle), but from my anecdata I've seen perhaps a 5x to 10x increase in other runners out when I am running in London so a drop in activity do…

[deleted]

Re: The Impact of Coronavirus on Global Activity

#26

Post by throwaway_pdp09 »

This is about physical activity, not economic as I first assumed.

It's also pretty much an advert "Try a free 90-day trial of Fitbit Premium"

Also there may be an issue of privacy WRT your personal data, even if this is aggregated and anonymised for this particular article.

Re: The Impact of Coronavirus on Global Activity

#27

Post by mumblemumble »

To add one more possible partial explanation to the list:

Back when I wore a fitness tracker, I typically didn't bother to put it on when I was staying home, including work from home days. It stays on the dresser next to my wallet, which doesn't get put in my pocket when I'm staying home.

I am going for long walks several times a day, in order to ensure I'm getting my exercise. I'm just not bothering to bring anything other than my house keys and maybe my cell phone when I do it.

Re: The Impact of Coronavirus on Global Activity

#28

Post by alamortsubite »

mattlondon wrote: post #21

Anecdotally, the only people I know in the UK who wear fitbits these days are retirees. I have seen a huge increase in the number of people out and about running. Perhaps they all ran on treadmills at the gym before (we are permitted to leave the house once a day for a run/walk/cycle), but from my anecdata I've seen perhaps a 5x to 10x increase in other runners out when I am running in London so a drop in activity do…

I've noticed far more people running where I live in the U.S., too. Today, it was cold and raining, and runners were everywhere. Ordinarily, I'd have expected to be the only one.

Re: The Impact of Coronavirus on Global Activity

#29

Post by watwut »

exochrono wrote: post #3

Fascinating. To be honest I'm surprised the declines aren't more significant. I guess it just goes to show how sedentary many of our lives already are xD

I can tell you that while I am most of time at home and we shop as rarely as possible, I am exercising more then before. To keep sane and healthy. And we go outside every day when we see no one is there for the same reason.

Re: The Impact of Coronavirus on Global Activity

#30

Post by pedalpete »

We make 3D virtual world maps for outdoor sports, and our API is built into a few different sports tracking apps, so I can give a bit of insight across a spectrum of different brands (without giving any details about who may be down more than others).

This is normally a high-growth time of year for us and February had started out REALLY well for us. We started to see a bit of a flattening of growth, and then March hit.

We're down 30% week on week for the past two weeks. This is amalgamated across visitors to our own site as well as the our API customers users. Everyone is being hit.

Most users come from the USA and Europe (France, Spain, UK, and Italy in particular).

A bunch of race events also use our tech, and of course, that has all disappeared.

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