Why some amateur athletes are giving up on smartwatches

• These practices have become commonplace in the world of sport, even for amateurs.
• Some 90 per cent of amateur runners now use a smartwatch or mobile application.
• Becoming part of a community of exercisers can also increase motivation by interweaving systems of mutual encouragement and competition.

The discontinuation of connected devices

• First of all, we should recall that the adoption of connected devices for sports is not evenly distributed across the population.
• In addition, the 30-39 age group is the most equipped with smart bracelets and smartwatches.
• We believe that the rejection of these devices may be the result of a deterioration in the quality of the experience of a sport when using them.
• It’s a question of rediscovering a form of lost freedom, of lightness, or even of resonance.

The adherence to quantification tools

• While dropping the tools is a significant and explainable phenomenon, the reasons for sticking to them must also be considered.
• What are the conditions that enable amateur runners to continue practising and quantifying their performance numerically while deriving pleasure and well-being from the activity?
• We showed that the amateur runners who persevered in using digital tools were the ones who had developed a high level of expertise in self-quantification.
• They also learn to let go of certain areas of quantification (sleep, for example) in order to focus their efforts exclusively on running.

The nature of the attachment to the device

• We wanted to gain a better understanding of the connection runners formed with their digital tracking device.
• This change, which was out of the ordinary for most of them, turned out to be particularly destabilizing and revealed how deeply incorporated their use of, and attachment to the tool was.
• All the subjects we studied initially admitted to being very apprehensive about the idea of running without their watch.
• Ultimately, there’s nothing spontaneous, magical or automatic about interacting with your quantification device in a functional way.

• Matthieu Quidu received funding from the University of Lyon 1 for a research project entitled, "In search of sobriety: sociological insights into the emergence of minimalist sporting practices."
• Brice Favier-Ambrosini received funding from the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et Culture (FRQSC) for a project entitled "Identifying the essential, eliminating the rest," an analysis of the trend towards minimalism in the consumption of sports leisure activities.