If you’re like many Americans, you probably have a fitness tracker or a smartwatch on your wrist or finger. As of 2023, a little more than a third of the population uses wearable trackers. They flood us with data, hours and quality of sleep, resting heart rate, exercise heart rate, calorie expenditure, time spent standing, step count, step length, step asymmetry, how fast you do stairs, and more.

All that data can be overwhelming — sometimes even stressful and counterproductive. Which stats really matter? “It can be hard to process all the information streaming in from our watches,” said David Conroy, PhD, professor of applied exercise science at the University of Michigan and a researcher of physical activity tracking. “In our work, we’ve narrowed in on step count as the important metric.”

Unless you’re working toward a specific health or fitness goal, step count indeed stands out among all the others for general wellness and longevity, as more and more research shows. The largest study — a collaborative effort by Johns Hopkins University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Colorado — combed numbers in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). The researchers compared 15 markers that impact longevity, and movement stood above all other measurements. This included predictors like age, gender, race, lifestyle habits, and more. “Activity is an easily modifiable measure, and some of the others are not,” said Erjia Cui, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota and one of the study’s co-authors.

The main takeaway: In a world of overwhelming data availability, the simple act of moving more each day will make the biggest difference in your longevity. With all those handy measurements, why should movement be the one you care most about? “It’s very easy to understand,” said Conroy. “It represents your volume of activity, whether by running or walking, or some combination of the two.”

Start off on the right foot before you take a walk. Poor posture can put pressure on your joints, lower back, and neck. If you’re a swimmer or cyclist, or you use a wheelchair, step count isn’t going to give you the best measurement, said Conroy. But for most folks, movement on feet is the easiest, most quantitative factor to track. “The caveat is that these devices have created a trap,” he said. “People want an easy answer — am I moving enough?”

That is a more difficult question to answer. For decades, the goal was 10,000 steps a day — but further research has shown that step counts as low as 2,500 still deliver long-term health benefits that increase as your step count rises — even past 10,000. The bottom line, however, is that more movement is better for you and serves as the best measurement of longevity.