🔗 Share this article

There's a building tension. I can see the frosty air emanating from my competitors as they perform the "starting line" jiggle on the start line.

A swift twitch of the hips.

I'm participating in my local weekly parkrun event and I mean business. It's almost time...

Hold on. I need to sort my watch. So does the runner alongside me.

The person waiting expresses impatience. I'm not moving until… yes! GPS ready, I'm off.

During the scramble, it's hard to find a person without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us runners who use them.

It's a thriving, multi-billion dollar industry. Brands like Samsung Galaxy dominate, all offering an extensive range of different models to fit a spectrum of budgets. Based on how feature-packed the model you select, price tags can range from £100 to thousands of pounds.

"It drives me insane, it's impossible to stop checking."

"It comforts me… It feels like a supporter encouraging me."

"Please don't notify me about a poor sleep."

A small sample of the comments I've received from like-minded tracker enthusiasts when I inquire what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on my own device? Right now, annoying. It's reporting my speed is wrong, causing me to question whether the overhead branches I'm running below are blocking my GPS connection.

Countless individuals of us fasten these small monitors onto our wrists and keep them on all day and night, apparently comfortable with the fact they're continuously monitoring us.

Long past are the days when we used them only to give us an idea of our daily steps. Today, they can analyse our sleep quality, stress levels, glucose levels, our recovery score.

It's a challenge to find a health indicator they fail to monitor.

But do they do what they say they do? And are the statistics we scrutinise a faithful picture of the truth? Do they boost our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of metrics and cheerleading alerts just add to our sense of overwhelm?

A Complicated Bond

"I do get a quite fixated with mine," a wearer confesses.

While she appreciates how her device monitors her runs, she finds some of its other capabilities "daunting" at times - a feeling initially realised during a pregnancy.

Prior to discovering she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was failing to be active enough. Now, the watch keeps telling her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I've got a infant, there's no point to be informed my sleep was poor," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly."

Is it not possible to just stop wearing it?

"I could, theoretically, but I have this love-hate relationship with it," she explains. "I love it for its fitness insights, I just wonder whether the myriad other functions it can now do is maybe excessive for me."

Inside the Device

Every device of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of measuring your vitals and interpreting your data, but the most use optical sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They commonly emit small, green LED lights onto your wrist which can observe blood flow, detecting your pulse rate. More advanced devices detect changes in the skin conductance that flows through the skin to assess your recovery state.

A Fine Balance

A data scientist says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the continuously improving tech could actually prevent illness, "spotting abnormalities before we show symptoms", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that newer wearables can conduct tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which regularly monitor how normal the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is abnormal signals in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is imminently going to suffer a heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more vulnerable of a stroke in the future.

But how to understand these numbers is complicated. The expert worries that as more functions are introduced, people may find it hard to fully comprehend their data.

"I remain sceptical that having the capacity to monitor so much data is such a good idea," he says.

A clinical psychologist studying wearable tech agrees. Research into the impact of wearable tech on a cohort of cardiovascular patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "more inclined to use healthcare resources".

She noted a vicious circle with her patients - they saw a worrying figure on their watch. They grew concerned. Their heart rate increased. They got increasingly anxious. They checked again, and their reading rose further.

"Upon viewing data about ourselves that we lack context for then, understandably, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We look, we obsess - it becomes a feedback loop."