@Egika said:
I ever wondered why anyone would like to know their step count. It must have been some good marketing from whoever came up with this…
I looked into the history of “step count” and asking some people I know who use that metric, and I think a few things came together to make it popular. First was the “10000 steps” idea made by a Japanese marketing firm years ago which I think people liked as being an easy number to remember, and it was promoted as a universal thing (compare with tracking active calories, where people of different weights like need different targets).
https://www.nuhs.edu/debunking-the-10000-step-myth-figuring-out-what-actually-matters/
It also resonates with some people as some of their “natural activity counts” towards it, so walking around the house, etc. gets one somewhat toward the goal then they just need to “finish their steps.”
I still see it ideally as more of a “training wheels” metric and think at least tracking active calories is better (so other activities like cycling and yoga “count better” despite not having many steps, as opposed to Polar’s system that assigns “step equivalents” to encourage non-walking activity). And Suunto puts steps and calories on the same Daily Health page so I can see someone new to fitness and Suunto thinking “need steps” eventually learning to use calories instead.
