Between apps, supplements and smart devices, the search for physical fitness becomes an obsession: thus fitness becomes toxic.
You recognize them immediately. You see them walking back and forth as you wait with them for the train to arrive at the station. Even in front of the elevator they can’t stand still. On the other hand, every step brings them closer to the goal. Why waste five minutes standing on the platform of the Milan Central Station or glued to the airport monitor waiting for the flight gate to appear, when you can scrape together a few hundred extra steps.
And if you stare at them in amazement, they are happy to tell you: “I’m doing my daily physical activity.” Welcome to the 10,000 steps club.
It is a tribe that is expanding, increasingly technological, equipped with cutting-edge tools for measuring heart rate, calories, making performance diagrams and projections, which counts steps like Scrooge McDuck counted dollars. In this circle, pampered by the pharmaceutical industry, courted by the giants of technology and the fitness industry, are the fanatics of food supplements, the gym, organic foods without any ifs or buts, and detox diets. All brought to life as a principle, followed like a religion, with the fanaticism of those who believe they are on the right path to secure the 100-year milestone. According to data contained in a Fortune Business Insights report, the fitness tracker market in 2024 had an estimated value of 62 billion dollars.
For 2025, it is estimated that revenues will grow, reaching 72 billion, and that they will reach 290.85 billion by 2032. Research by Cornell University and the University of Chicago provides some further indications: the global demand for intelligent devices to monitor the state of health could go from the current 47 million units to 2 billion by 2050. A 42-fold increase and an expected global value of over 154 billion dollars by 2031, with annual growth of 16.3%.
A market led by giants such as Apple, Samsung Electronics, Huawei Technologies and Google (Fitbit) who compete for this billion-dollar business. The phenomenon affects the entire world population. One in five Americans regularly uses tools to monitor their parameters; in Japan the growing use of these devices is seen above all in the older population, who use them to control heart rate, analyze sleep quality or manage chronic diseases. In China, brands like Xiaomi or Huawei have launched functional and affordable products, which dominate e-commerce.
Europe is no exception. In Great Britain, more than a quarter of the adult population owns a fitness tracker and in Italy in 2024, 2.4 million smartwatches and smartbands, smart bracelets for monitoring vital functions, were sold. Market research conducted by the World Economic Forum found that already in 2023, 66% of GenZ people used digital tools for health, compared to 40% among other generations. Furthermore, 18% of very young people said they followed an online training plan and 17% said they used apps to control their diet. Nearly twice as many Gen Z respondents as older respondents admitted to using specific apps.
But experts have observed that the more control you exercise, the more dependent you become on outcomes. The confirmation is in a study published in The Lancet, the prestigious English scientific journal, which shows that those who use wearable devices increased intense physical activity by six minutes a day, took approximately 1,800 more steps, walking 40 minutes more. To what extent is this performance truly healthy or does it end up being a conditioning that borders on obsessive dependence?
The border is blurred. Fitness trackers that keep every moment of everyday life under control and constantly send notifications to remind you to take more steps, get up from your chair, drink more water, sleep longer to reach the goal considered optimal, dictate the rhythm of the day and end up planning it down to the minute.
Thus the supposedly healthy standard for achieving longevity and organic perfection becomes a cage, a prison. «The problem is who controls what. When I’m in a state of control, I choose habits consciously and know when I need to be flexible. The problem arises when the object controls me. Then I feel bad if I don’t complete the objective set in a rigid manner”, explains Gianluca Castelnuovo, professor of Clinical Psychology at the psychology faculty of the Catholic University of Milan, to Panorama. «To be balanced, everyday life requires great flexibility. Vigoxia – a psychological disorder characterized by the obsession with not being muscular enough – and orthorexia – the pathological fixation on the quality and “purity” of food – are behaviors that tend towards unrealistic perfection. But the more you pursue this goal, the more bitter the disappointment becomes. We must rather work with our own limits and shortcomings, accepting that we cannot be 100%, it is not normal. Life is made of compromises, we do not live by excellence and perfection but by normality”, underlines Castelnuovo.
But, apparently, this normality made of imperfections is often rejected. As also emerges from a discussion reported on the social network Reddit, there is another side to health obsessions. “If I walk without my smartwatch I feel bad, because the steps are not recorded,” writes one user, while another says he abandoned the digital device because “counting calorie expenditure compared to calories eaten, in addition to making sure each workout was counted per minute” had caused him a lot of stress.
Research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association confirms that people who use tools to monitor their heart rate tend to be more anxious. Also linked to the spasmodic desire for physical or health perfection is the reckless use of supplements. There are those who have as many as the letters of the alphabet, in the illusion of having a shield against old age and disease, forgetting that their purpose, in fact, is to “supplement” the diet only in the case of proven deficiencies or an increased need that the diet cannot satisfy.
Behind this vitamin and protein bulimia, there is an increasingly important turnover. An analysis conducted by Integratori & Salute, Unionfood’s sector association, finds that this market in Italy has exceeded the threshold of 4 billion euros in sales. The sector of increasingly smaller, lighter and more efficient wearable devices is also growing exponentially. In addition to smartwatches, the most popular are rings – smart rings – equipped with sensors to detect heart rate, blood oxygen level and temperature, in addition to monitoring the quality of sleep and fitness sessions.
Usually these tools are accompanied by support apps that allow you to record the parameters collected to allow the user to calmly analyze them later, so that you can better evaluate your condition both in moments of relaxation and under stress. Have you ever seen something slip through the cracks!
What can we say about the brand new smart patch which, positioned on the skin, monitors the state of health and communicates information in real time on the smartphone or tablet screen.
Those who think they can escape the relentless marketing are caught back by social media that offer apps and videos with challenging performances. Is everyone healthier? Perhaps. Certainly more anxious.
