🔗 Share this article Is It Possible I'm Dependent on My Smartwatch? Numerous athletes catch themselves consulting their devices countless times during a event. A sense of nervous excitement. Visible is the chilled vapour coming from my competitors as they do the "about to run" jiggle on the starting line. A quick movement of the hips. I'm participating in my local weekly parkrun event and I'm serious. It's almost time... Hold on. I must sort my device. As does the runner beside me. The person waiting tuts. I'm not moving until… there! GPS ready, I'm off. During the scramble, it's challenging to see a person without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us runners who wear them. We're witnessing a booming, massive industry. Brands like Apple Watch dominate, each with an wide array of diverse versions to cater to a range of needs. According to how high tech the device you go for, prices can range from a hundred pounds to a small fortune. "It makes me crazy, I can't switch off." "It comforts me… It's like a friend supporting me." "Please don't notify me I've had a bad night's sleep." A handful of the reactions I've had from fellow tracker enthusiasts when I question what they feel about theirs. Frequent wearers are left wondering whether the metrics on their watch is accurate. A Sea of Statistics My feelings on my own device? Right now, annoying. It's reporting I'm not hitting my target, making me wonder whether the foliage I'm running below are blocking my satellite signal. A vast number of us attach these little monitors onto our wrists and keep them on 24/7, ostensibly at ease with the fact they're continuously monitoring us. Gone are the days when we used them solely to give us an idea of our daily steps. Today, they can track our sleep quality, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our recovery score. It's tricky to find a physical metric they aren't designed to measure. But can they do what they say they do? And are the data points we analyse a true reflection of the truth? Do they enhance our overall health, or do the plethora of metrics and cheerleading alerts just increase our everyday anxiety? Some users find the sheer number of functions on their smartwatches to be "too much" at times. A Love-Hate Relationship "I do get a quite obsessed with mine," a wearer reveals. While she loves how her device tracks her exercise, she finds some of its other capabilities "excessive" at times - a feeling first discovered during a major life event. Until she found out she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch insists her she's had a poor sleep score. "I have a young baby, there's no point to be informed my sleep was poor," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly." Couldn't she just stop wearing it? "It's possible, theoretically, but I've got this love-hate relationship with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, I just wonder whether the additional features it can now do is possibly excessive for me." How Do They Work? Every device of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of tracking your vitals and interpreting your data, but the most use sensors on the underside of the watch. They typically shine minute LED lights onto your wrist which can monitor pulsation, detecting your pulse rate. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to gauge your nervous system activity. A Fine Balance A professor says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the rapidly advancing tech could potentially prevent illness, "identifying issues before we notice anything", it could also turn us the tracked into the "anxious healthy". He points out that newer wearables can carry out tests like medical-grade monitoring, which regularly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic impulses in the heart causing an arrhythmia. This does not mean someone is on the verge of a heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more at risk of a stroke in the years to come. But how to make sense of these readings is complex. The expert fears that as more functions are added, people may struggle to fully comprehend their data. "I have some doubts that having the capacity to monitor so many metrics is such a good idea," he says. A clinical psychologist focusing on patient behaviour echoes this sentiment. A study into the effect of wearable tech on a specific group of heart condition patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced increased anxiety and were "had a higher tendency to use medical services". She identified a pattern with her patients - they spotted a alarming metric on their watch. They felt anxious. Their heart rate went up. They got more worried. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety increased again. "When people are presented with stats about ourselves that we lack context for then, of course, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a vicious cycle."