Your Phone as Another Way to Keep Healthy?
By Ilan Stein
Usually, the idea of mobile phones and staying healthy don’t really go together. Articles cite how the daily use of our phones has made us “lazy” or “apathetic” to the daily intricacies of our modern world and see them only as a negative, but not as a powerful tool that can also be used for you to stay in tip top shape. With the existence of thousands of applications that relate to fitness and wellbeing, your phone can become a potent and easy to use tool for you to stay in shape, and track said progress.
The first kind of useful application on your cellular device are trackers. These can include applications that track physical activity, calories burned, calories consumed, distance traveled, etc. Names such as MyFitnessPal come to mind, which can help you track your physical activity throughout the day. Another popular tracking, Strava, is used mainly for cyclists tracking their routes.
But why are these applications important? Well, for the very fact that they can provide additional incentive for you to go outside. When you write things down and keep track of them, either through an app or a notebook, you become more aware of your progress, and are thus inclined to continue logging your achievements and continue on your journey. Many applications feature ways of competing with your friends or completing fun challenges, ways of keeping users engaged and focused on their activities.
Finally, outside of the more conventional trackers, there also exist some mobile games that can incentivize you to go out and indulge in some sort of physical activity outside in order to play effectively. The hit title “Pokemon Go” for example, which saw its climax of players throughout 2016-2018, had thousands of people walking around trying to collect as many digital “Pokemon” as possible, by walking around and exploring new areas. I myself recently redownloaded the app, and have spent much of the summer wandering with friends in the outdoors having loads of fun.
All in all, with technology becoming more and more advanced every day, it is essential to realize that it can also be applied to more niche areas of our lives such as physical activity and health, rather than solely work and social media!