The future is here.
Technology we once thought of as only possible in sci-fi movies is being brought to life. For example, Christina Ernst, @shebuildsrobots on Instagram and on her website, has created interactive, motion-detecting, or movable costumes that capture the likeness of characters from stories, such as a Ratatouille costume with a toy rat that moves her hair or a Medusa dress with movable snakes.
On Instagram, YouTube, and on many other social media platforms, you can see even more people like Christina Ernst filming videos through their glasses, making gala-worthy statement pieces, or wearing jewelry that can monitor how well they’re sleeping. These devices are known as wearable technology.
Lily Swilling, a high school student who has built wearable tech devices, found her interest in STEM through what she called “fashion technology.” She says, “I think wearable technology offers engineering avenues not found with regular, non-human-friendly mechanical robotics.”
Wearable technology, like Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, Fitbits, or Apple Watches, has grown in popularity since the early 2000s, with the wearable device market predicted to increase by about $99.4 billion in the years 2025-2029, as reported by Technavio, an organization providing market research reports on emerging industries.
According to DiscoverAtlanta, the city is a major tech hub with over 13,000 technology companies, more than 1,000 startups, and several universities with tech initiatives. Furthermore, the technology industry in Atlanta has grown by 15% since 2018, creating more technology jobs at major corporations. The most prominent Atlanta-based tech startups have combined valuations exceeding $1 billion. This wearable technology is being developed at all levels throughout Atlanta, including by college students.
In 2022, a team of four students from the Georgia Institute of Technology founded Stridelink, where the university’s CREATE-X innovation and entrepreneurship hub enabled them to launch their product, a shoe-lace-sized device that attaches to one’s footwear for gait analysis and patient monitoring, providing clinicians with mobility data. Other technologies, such as the OrCam MyEye, an assistive technology device that helps those with visual impairment, attach to one’s glasses and scan their surroundings, allowing them to read text and identify objects.
While groundbreaking devices such as these have the potential to ease — and even save — lives, it is important to consider how their increasing prevalence poses dangers: namely, data collection and privacy concerns.
Wearable devices collect data through sensors, processors, and connections to other devices. According to the Brown University Center for Digital Health, “as many wearable devices share data with third-party apps and services, it is often unclear how this data is being used.”
Many popular wearable tech companies have faced criticism for how they share user data. Take, for example, the Oura ring, which faced backlash from users online after announcing its partnership with Palantir and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). Oura claims this partnership would not violate its data-handling practices. The company also claims they would only support the DoD in “enhancing human performance.” But, with a device constantly collecting data, it is normal for users of such devices to develop anxiety about their data, in more ways than one.
Swilling mentions another drawback of integrating wearable technology into everyday life: “over-digitizing,” where the presence of such devices could become “over-stimulating, with its lights, reminding pings, and other functions.” As Dr. Christopher Cheung and Dr. Mussa Saad explain in the Journal of the American Heart Association, 15%-20% of patients who wore wearable devices to measure heart rate and monitor symptoms reported feeling fear or anxiety when alerts sounded.
Despite the shortcomings of wearable tech, its recent emergence and growth as a market overall, as well as its applicability to various industries ranging from healthcare to indicate how crucial innovation is in today’s diverse technology landscape.
Ayan Ahmed, a high school senior who has been doing robotics since she was in elementary school, expressed that her interest in STEM was sparked from “[her] favorite movie, ‘Meet the Robinsons,’” where “they had this robot on there that did everything for the family and helped everyone out.” Anika Gupta, a senior at Milton High School who hopes to major in computer science, states that “STEM is a great way to actually solve problems. You can engineer or code solutions … and then [they] can be accessible to the entire world.”
