“But then my other arm would always get tired from pushing the stroller,” she said. “So I was like, ‘You know what? Let me put it on my ankle.’”
Ms. Gale, 33, who also wears the watch on her ankle when she uses StairMaster and elliptical machines at the gym, does a double take whenever she sees someone else doing the same thing. It does not happen often, she said, but when it does, there tends to be an instant connection.
“It has definitely been a conversation,” she said, “and I do recommend it to other people, especially moms. I’ll be like, ‘Girl, you need to start putting it on your ankle!’”
Zoe Hughley Beasley, a loan officer from Columbia, Mo., became a member of the ankle-watch cabal shortly after her workplace invested in walking pads a couple of years ago. As she worked and walked at her standing desk, she found that her steps were not registering when the watch was on her wrist.
“Because I’m just typing emails and you’re attached to your keyboard,” she said.
Like Ms. Gale, Mrs. Hughley Beasley, 32, now wears the watch on her ankle whenever she pushes her newborn son, Brooks, in his stroller. The various metrics that the app tracks — heart rate, calories, distance — seem accurate, she said, even if her approach is unconventional.
“I know it’s ridiculous,” she said.
That was the gist of a TikTok that Shomar Griffiths, a teacher from Oshawa, Ontario, produced after he became aware of the trend. In the video, Mr. Griffiths, 35, has the Apple Watch on his ankle and pretends to use it for everyday tasks like checking the time and using Apple Pay at the drive-through window. It does not go well.
