🔗 Share this article

A sense of nervous excitement. I can see the frosty air coming from my fellow runners as they perform the "about to run" wiggle on the starting line.

A rapid flick of the hips.

I'm at my local 5km community parkrun and I mean business. Three, two, one...

Oh, hang on. I need to adjust my device. As does the person beside me.

The person waiting tuts. I refuse to go until… done! Connection established, I'm off.

Amidst the crowd, it's difficult to see a person without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us participants who wear them.

This is a thriving, massive market. Companies like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, featuring an extensive range of various devices to fit a spectrum of needs. Based on how high tech the model you choose, prices can range from a hundred pounds to thousands of pounds.

"I find it infuriating, it's impossible to stop checking."

"It provides solace… It feels like a companion guiding me."

"Stop telling me I've had a poor sleep."

A handful of the reactions I've had from other smartwatch wearers when I inquire what they feel about theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My current opinion on my own device? At this moment, irritating. It's indicating I'm off pace, making me wonder whether the foliage I'm passing under are interfering with my GPS connection.

Countless individuals of us strap these little monitors onto our arms and wear them 24/7, seemingly comfortable with the fact they're perpetually monitoring us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an estimation of our daily steps. Today, they can track our sleep quality, blood pressure, glucose levels, our recovery score.

It's tricky to find a bodily function they don't track.

But are they able to do what they say they do? And are the statistics we scrutinise a true reflection of our actual health? Do they enhance our overall health, or do the avalanche of measurements and motivational messages just increase our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

"I do get a a little obsessed with mine," an individual reveals.

While she appreciates how her device monitors her workouts, she finds some of its other features "excessive" at times - a feeling first discovered during a pregnancy.

Until she found out she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I've got a infant, it's unnecessary for me to be notified I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly."

Is it not possible to just remove it?

"I suppose I could, I suppose, but I have this love-hate relationship with it," she says. "I value it for its workout tracking, but I'm unsure whether the additional features it can now do is possibly excessive for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Every device of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of monitoring your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the majority use optical sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They usually emit minute LED lights onto your arm which can monitor blood flow, identifying your BPM. Higher-end devices detect changes in the electrical current that runs through the skin to assess your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the ever-evolving tech could realistically aid early diagnosis, "detecting disease before we notice anything", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can carry out tests like medical-grade monitoring, which continuously monitor how healthy the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is erratic signals in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not automatically signal someone is on the verge of a cardiac event, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more at risk of a heart problem in the long term.

But how to understand these readings is complex. The expert worries that as additional features are introduced, people may find it hard to fully understand their data.

"I remain sceptical that having the capacity to monitor so many metrics is such a positive development," he says.

A clinical psychologist focusing on wearable tech concurs. Research into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of cardiovascular patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced greater stress and were "far more likely to use healthcare resources".

She noted a vicious circle with her patients - they saw a concerning reading on their watch. They became worried. Their pulse increased. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their reading increased again.

"Upon viewing stats about ourselves that we don't really understand then, of course, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we obsess - it becomes a feedback loop."