IT Home Addresses "Overweight" Rating Criticism, Updates Feature

Chinese technology firm IT Home has taken corrective action following backlash over a health monitoring feature on its children's smartwatches. The feature controversially flagged a 167cm tall girl weighing 50.5kg as "overweight," stating she weighed more than "99% of girls her age." This assessment sparked widespread concern and criticism.

An IT Home public relations representative publicly acknowledged that the phrasing was "imprecise" and that the company has "optimized" the feature without delay. The company established a task force to conduct internal reviews and implemented an urgent online rectification on August 25. Consequently, all evaluative and judgmental content has been removed from the product interface. The display now exclusively shows objective data, including user-inputted height and weight, and a Body Mass Index (BMI) calculated via a standard formula.

IT Home explained that the feature's original intent was to provide parents with growth reference data for their children, but conceded that the product's expression was indeed flawed. The company stated that they will maintain the solution displaying only objective data in the short term, with further considerations on future iterations to be determined by the product department. The company affirmed its acceptance of supervision from users, media, and the public.

The netizen who initially posted the video, along with numerous other commentators, expressed concerns that such judgments could induce unnecessary anxiety in children and adolescents. They argued that a person of 167cm and 50.5kg should be considered slender, not "overweight." IT Home's customer service had initially claimed the system used standards from China's National Health Commission for weight assessment. However, calculation of the girl's BMI (approximately 18.1) according to the National Health Commission's standards did not fall into the overweight range for children and adolescents, which typically requires a BMI above the 85th percentile for the same age and gender. Medical experts and pediatric hospital specialists emphasize that assessing a child's weight should integrate factors such as age, gender, body composition, waist circumference, and overall physical examination, not solely height and weight.