“My vision is that every American is wearing a wearable within four years.”
The speaker was Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The occasion was his testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health.
“Wearing a wearable” is a goofy phrase in itself, and to the uninitiated, it’s almost nonsense. A “wearable,” in Kennedy’s usage, is a health-monitoring device connected to your smartphone or the internet that is continuously on your body, measuring vitals all day. The Fitbit, Apple Watch, and Oura ring are the most well-known.
“Every American … wearing a wearable” sounds more like a tech CEO’s dream than a politician’s, so Kennedy’s words deserve some exploration.
First, the tech-CEO charge is not that far off. His advisers, Calley and Casey Means, are both in businesses that profit from wearable use.
Second, this is more than the typical Michelle Obama-style Washington health-scolding. The thing about wearable technologies, which can directly or indirectly track your exercise, your rest, and your alcohol intake, and which want you to report your diet and your weight, is that they gather a lot of information on you and send that information to the internet.
When a top federal official with strong proclivities toward Big Government says everyone should wear health-tracking devices, it gives off more than nanny-state vibes. It sounds like Big Brother stuff.
“We think that wearables are a key to the MAHA agenda of making America healthy again, and we are going to—” Kennedy said before he caught himself. The Department of Health and Human Services is going to what?
Government surveillance isn’t the only concern here. Part of the problem is the anthropology implicitly preached here. When we are told that everywhere, at all times, we should be tracking our heart rate, our steps per day, our sleep, our body mass index, and our exertion, this drives home a message about priorities, and it subtly tweaks our sense of self.
This all plays into two separate but overlapping cultural trends: The medicalization of everything and the self-absorbed optimization mindset.
On medicalization, consider the social contagion of transgenderism, the rise of folks whose identity is “immunocompromised,” and the millions of women who are placed on birth control at 14 and who never go a day in their adult life without popping the pill.
Sometimes at odds with this mindset, but similarly obsessive, is the health-optimizer. Consider the Instagram videos of the daily routine with the ice bath, the lifting, the intermittent fasting, and never grabbing a beer with friends, sitting down to a family meal, or helping a neighbor move a couch.
This vision, of every single person tracking his own vital signs at all times, may sound like progress to Kennedy, but it also sounds like a lifelong stay in a rehabilitation center.