Fitness trackers are bad for children’s welfare, says head

FITNESS trackers are damaging youngsters’ mental health and parents should stop encouraging their children to wear them, a leading preparatory school headmaster has warned.

The trackers, which can measure anything from the number of steps you take to your heart rate, are viewed by many parents as a good way to encourage their children to exercise.

But William Dunlop, head of Clayesmore Preparatory School in Dorset, said that “well-meaning” mothers and fathers are buying the gadgets without considering the negative side effects, such as contributing towards anxiety or other mental health issues.

“You have physical as well as mental consequences,” he said. “I see the early stages of that. It is not long before the competitive instinctive could become quite unhealthy”.

Writing in Attain, the Independent Prep School Association’s magazine, he said that impressionable children are “particularly susceptible to obsessive behaviour in pursuit of arbitrary goals”, and that the trackers can lead to “unforeseen risks… and overwork”.