People are ditching their Apple Watches after feeling bullied to burn calories and ‘close their rings’
After much frustration, Ryann Nicole decided to break off her eight-year relationship—with her Apple Watch.
When she first got it, she loved having access to all the data about how many calories she was burning, her heart rate, and her step count.
But over time, she realized that her days were revolving around those numbers entirely, and whether or not she had “closed her rings”—a goals-based feature through which users aim to hit certain numbers of calories burned, exercise minutes, and stand hours.
Nicole says it reached a point where if she hadn’t closed her rings by the end of the day, she’d pace her living room late at night to hit her goals.
“I realized, This is not healthy. This is something that I’m consumed by,” she tells Fortune. “I didn’t work out to enjoy it. It was all about, what did the Apple Watch say?”
Nicole is not alone in tossing the tracker after a relationship that soured. Many—this reporter included—have done so because they felt that what started as a helpful, intriguing tool took a turn to become an annoyance at best and, at worst, a harmful obsession.
It’s pushing a slew of people to share their frustrations on social media.
“I feel ashamed but I’ve been taking a walk at 11:30 p.m. just to complete my ring before midnight,” one former Apple Watch fan posted on Reddit. “I was feeling angry if I exercised and forgot to activate the exercise app.”
“I let that thing control me,” another person said on TikTok. “If I didn’t hit 10,000 steps a day or close my rings, I would be…pacing at home, trying to close my rings, trying to hit 10,000 steps.”
When health tracking turns unhealthy
Apple Watch is not the only fitness tracker that’s bugging people, of course: The Oura Ring and Whoop have inspired plenty of their own social media complaints (about anxiety and metrics obsessions, respectively). But the Apple Watch remains the most popular health tracker, and has taken the brunt of fitness-tracker criticism—despite its many health benefits and at least one remarkable case of it saving somebody’s life.
Some users on Reddit said they’ve been swapping their Apple Watches for a workout tracker app called Gentler Streak, which emphasizes a “self-compassionate approach to exercise, where recovery is as important as intensity.”
“After five years focusing on closing the rings, I decided that I don’t care anymore,” one user wrote. “I subscribed to Gentler Streak and enjoy a healthier view on working out, in balance with my current body status.”
Research has found that fixation on health tracking has the potential to turn harmful in some cases, especially for perfectionists or people with a history of eating disorders or anxiety. In a 2017 study published in Eating Behaviors, researchers found that calorie and fitness tracking devices have been linked to characteristics associated with eating disorders. Additionally, in a 2023 study, participants whose Apple watches displayed a deflated step count had reduced self-esteem and increased blood pressure and heart rate; they also ate more unhealthily compared to participants whose step counts were not manipulated.
It's important to note that Apple, which declined to comment for this story, now has more options to adjust your notifications and activity rings: One allows you to pause your activity rings and customize your daily goals by the day of the week. Another lets you switch your watch face from the activity rings to images of anything you’d like—even the face of a regular watch.
Plenty of Reddit users have taken to the platform to defend the watch, stating how closing their rings motivates them to exercise more, track health metrics, and be more active overall.
In response to the anxiety-fueled posts about closing rings, one person posted on Reddit: “The rings are meant to be a tool or a reference, and not the end-all, be-all. You should control the rings; the rings shouldn't control you.”
Still, over on TikTok, in particular, there are endless complaints. When influencer Sydney Adams King posted that she was breaking up with her Apple Watch, she said, “I feel like I pay too much attention to it and let it decide if my workouts are good or not.”
Nutritionist and personal trainer Katy Saltsman posted on TikTok that after a vacation spent obsessively checking her Apple Watch to see the status of her goals and activity rings, she realized how much those data points were weighing on her.
“I realized how disconnected I was from my body,” she said in the video. “There’s also this stress to hit these random numbers every single day, where even my rest days didn’t feel restful.”
One TikToker titled her video: “Raise your hand if you’ve been personally victimized by Apple Watch notifications.”
“Quite literally nothing has made me crazier or more obsessive than the notifications on this bad boy that are like, ‘You can still do it,’ ‘Close your rings,’ ‘Keep it up,’” she said in the video. “If I needed a stand hour but I was stuck in class, I would discreetly shake my wrist because I needed to close those rings.”
And as one poster on Reddit put it, ditching the Apple Watch—and all fitness trackers—was a “game changer.”
“No more stress from constant monitoring, no more notifications that friends have completed workouts and feeling like a slob for not having completed a workout that day, no more reminder to stand upright after hiking for the last six hours and finally sitting in the car,” the user wrote on Reddit. “I feel free. I started enjoying my workouts without pressure and trying to stay in my zones. It reduced my stress, and I became healthier and happier.”
More on fitness trackers:
Top CEOs are obsessed with this $300 Oura Ring that tracks sleep and health metrics
Your Apple Watch or Fitbit may be a breeding ground for E. coli and staph bacteria. Here’s how to clean your fitness tracker
Your fitness tracker can measure your stress—and help you lower it. Here’s how
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
