Using a Consumer Wearable Activity Monitoring Device to Study Physical Activity and Sleep Among Adolescents in Project Viva: Cohort Study.

Background: The increasing prevalence of physical inactivity and insufficient sleep in adolescents likely contribute to worsening cardiometabolic and mental health. However, obtaining accurate behavioral measures is a challenge. Consumer wearable devices offer a user-friendly method to assess physical activity and sleep.

Objective: This study aimed to describe the process and the preliminary results of physical activity and sleep collected using a consumer wearable Fitbit device in an adolescent cohort.

Methods: We provided Fitbit Charge 2 or Charge 3 wrist-worn activity monitors to adolescent participants in Project Viva, a Boston, Massachusetts area cohort, from 2017 to 2022. We invited participants to wear the devices for ≥7 days for 24 hours a day to measure their physical activity, heart rate, and sleep, and allowed them to keep the device as a participation incentive.

Results: We collected over 7 million minutes of physical activity, heart rate, and sleep data from 677 participants, 53% (356/677) of whom were female. The mean (SD) age of participants was 17.7 (0.7) years. Among the 677 participants, 65% (n=439) were non-Hispanic White, 14% (n=947) were non-Hispanic Black, 10% (n=69) were Hispanic, 3.2% (n=22) were non-Hispanic Asian, and 7.8% (n=53) belonged to other races. Participants demonstrated a high adherence to the research protocol, with the mean (SD) wear duration of 7.5 (1.1) days, and 90% of participants (612/677) had 5 or more days wearing the device for >600 minutes/day. The mean (SD) number of steps was 8883 (3455) steps/day and the mean (SD) awake sedentary time was 564 (138) minutes/day. Male participants were more often engaged in very active (27 minutes/day) and moderately active physical activity (29 minutes/day) compared with female participants (15 and 17 minutes/day, respectively). Over 87% (588/677) of participants had sleep data available for 5 or more days, among whom the average nightly sleep duration was 7.9 (SD 0.9) hours.

Conclusions: This study demonstrated the feasibility of using consumer wearable devices to measure physical activity and sleep in a cohort of US adolescents. The high compliance rates provide valuable insights into adolescent behavior patterns and their influence on chronic disease development and mental health outcomes.