That viral post about 10,000 steps being fake got passed around my whole feed, so I looked up the actual study

Olivia Scott · 2026-10-11T15:55:05.527834+00:00

I was sitting at my kitchen table in Boise on a Tuesday when my sister sent me that post, the one claiming some researcher admitted the 10,000 step thing was just a Japanese pedometer ad from the 60s. The post had like 40k shares and quoted a "study" with no author, no journal, nothing. I dug for about an hour and found the real paper from 2021 in a legit journal that followed 2,000 people and showed benefits leveling off closer to 7,000 steps, not falling apart at 10k. So the ad origin is sort of true, but the post twisted it into "steps don't matter," which the data does not say at all. Anyone else see this one going around, and did the version you got also leave out the part where the researchers still found a clear benefit?

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That viral post about 10,000 steps being fake got passed around my whole feed, so I looked up the actual study | Bad Takes Autopsy - Vivisector