"One Small Step For Man" Measuring How Many Steps Massive Numbers of People Take Each Day

One Small Step for Man

Technology is often criticized for encouraging laziness. After all, why bother to get off the couch when the world is in the palm of your hand?

But a new Stanford University study amassing “planetary-scale” data from people’s smartphones could give insights to improve people’s health and combat rising obesity levels, reported the BBC.

In the new study – published in the journal Nature – scientists analysed 68 million days of minute-by-minute data to find the average number of people’s daily steps was 4,961.

Hong Kong – where residents averaged 6,880 steps a day – topped the list, while Indonesia came last at just 3,513 steps. In the US, the average number of daily steps is 4,774.

These findings could help researchers tackle obesity by honing in on “activity inequality,” or the difference between the fittest and laziest segments of the population.

Higher levels of activity inequality go hand in hand with higher rates of obesity.

“For instance, Sweden had one of the smallest gaps between activity rich and activity poor… it also had one of the lowest rates of obesity,” Tim Althoff, one of the researchers involved in the study told BBC.

In this sense, designing town and cities that promote greater physical activity – or “higher walkability” – could reduce this inequality, they added.

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