“What are these health features that are so medically reliable on a smartwatch that becomes ewaste in 2 years?”

You act like half of these features don’t need government approval. There are some minor features on my watch that I can’t use because the FDA (the US’ health authority) didn’t authorize it. So yes, the data that decent smartwatches track is medically reliable enough for the FDA and other regulatory bodies to allow.

“Stop eating shit, change up your diet and lifestyle and incorporate 20 minutes of exercise everyday” Oh my god bro, I wish I thought of that! Man, everything makes so much sense now! All I need to do is turn off all of my impulses and just eat salads and drink smoothies all day! It’s so simple! I think I just lost 50 pounds right this instant!

I just changed your life and saved you thousands of dollars and the environment from ewaste.

All you did was give cookie-cutter advice. If you want to speak strictly from a population perspective, fine. On an individual level, though, this is dogshit advice because it’s devoid of nuance. Someone who works 2 or 3 jobs isn’t going to have time to take care of themselves, let alone have time for 20 minutes of decent exercise. Someone who’s a single parent working minimum wage will not cook a healthy meal for the family and will probably opt for fast food instead. Someone with broken legs can’t run, walk, or play most sports and thus have fewer opportunities to exercise. People with mental conditions like Autism and ADHD will hyperfocus on some Wikipedia rabbithole for hours and miss their exercise timeslot without realizing it. Stressed office workers and college students will be cramming or working overtime to meet quotas etc etc.

Literally all of those realistic and common scenarios involve major roadblocks that prevent people from “changing their lives.” Each person needs their own solution, and for many people, smartwatches fit incredibly well into that solution. Sleep through alarms? Your watch can vibrate and wake you up. Anger issues? Your watch can tell you when you need to cool down with breathing exercises. Sitting too long because you’re working? Your watch can tell you to take walking breaks. In your view, the alternative is probably to simply set a timer to take a walking break. In most people’s views, however, the alternative is probably not taking a walking break because they don’t even think about walking breaks.

Having tools to make healthy choices easier will inherently make it more likely to make healthy choices. If you think that everyone needs to follow your barebones advice instead of trying to actively use a smartwatch, then I want you to try the following:

• Buy individual parts for a Lenovo Thinkpad and build it from scratch. Then, after it works, install an OS without using another laptop or desktop.

Congratulations, you have a working laptop. Your coworker bought theirs from Best Buy and spent about 10 minutes, but they literally don’t use all of it! You obviously did the better thing, and assuming you’re most people, it only took 10 hours to build your first laptop! Hooray!

Now if that analogy didn’t work because you already know a decent bit about PC building, then replace it with building a car, or building a bike, or literally anything that you don’t already know. Regardless, having tools, whether knowledge based or tangible, makes building things easier, and smartwatches for many people are just tools for building healthier lives.