WeWard Releases First-Ever State of Walking Report, Revealing Surprising Insights Into America's Walking Habits

New data from walking app WeWard reveals Americans' walking patterns, shedding light on global, regional, and demographic disparities in physical activity.

NEW YORK, Sept. 15, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- WeWard, the free app backed by Venus Williams motivating 25 million people to walk, today unveiled its inaugural State of Walking Report, a first-of-its-kind look at the state of physical activity based on data from 7.7 million users, including 1.3 million Americans, collected between January and June 2025.

The report uncovers patterns and disparities in Americans' walking activity, including comparisons on an international, regional, and demographic level. Findings underscore the scale of the inactivity epidemic, which affect 81% of young adults according to the WHO, while highlighting potential external factors that shape daily movement.

Highlights include:

• Young adults (16-24 year olds) fall behind older generations, particularly in comparison to the 45-54 year old range, who outpace them by roughly 15%.
• Men are taking nearly 30% more steps than women this year, averaging around 8,745 each day.
• All states miss the mark: None of the U.S. states met the newly-recommended 7,000 steps a day target, though a few came close. Further, less than half of residents in each state met this goal.
• New York leads, West Coast follows: Of the states, New York topped the list as the most active with 6,947 average daily steps, followed by California, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin.
• U.S. lags behind global peers: The U.S. ranked second to last in daily average steps in comparison to that of other OECD countries, ahead of only Canada.

"We're proud to share this first-of-its-kind report to reveal important truths about the state of physical activity," said WeWard Co-founder and CEO Yves Benchimol. "While there were notable walking disparities between groups, we think narrowing these gaps is entirely feasible, as we've seen first hand how digital tools can make a real difference in behavior change at the population level."

In addition to WeWard data, the analysis explores broader influences that could be attributed to the differences in walking activity across cohorts, including income level, access to green space, and screen time habits.

The study, which can be found on the company's website, reflects WeWard's commitment to being a leading source of insights on physical activity and wellness, aligning with its mission to inspire daily movement and support healthier routines.

"At WeWard, we believe that walking is more than just a way to get around: it's beneficial to our health, the environment, and society," said Tanguy de La Villegeorges, Co-founder and Chief Data Officer at WeWard. "Through this report, our goal is to raise awareness about the prevalence of sedentary habits, which is a major challenge of our time and a driving force of our mission."

About WeWard
Founded in 2019 by Yves Benchimol, WeWard is a free mobile app designed to make walking a more rewarding part of people's lives. Through gamifying and socializing the step count, the app rewards users for their daily walking activity through incentives such as cash deposits, gift purchases, charity donations, and a variety of social and community-based features. More than 25M users have signed up to join the platform, which has been shown to increase user walking time by nearly 25%. It is available in 29 countries across the globe. To learn more, visit https://www.wewardapp.com/.

SOURCE WeWard