🔗 Share this article Is It Possible I'm Addicted to This Smartwatch? Countless individuals end up checking their devices innumerable times during a race. A sense of building tension. Visible is the cold breath coming from my fellow runners as they execute the "pre-race" wiggle on the beginning point. A rapid flick of the hips. I'm lined up for my local weekly parkrun event and I'm serious. Three, two, one... Oh, hang on. I must sort my device. The same goes for the runner alongside me. The person in the line tuts. I won't start until… done! Connection established, and I'm running. Amidst the crowd, it's difficult to spot a person without a fitness tracker on it. And it's not just us athletes who rely on them. This is a booming, multi-billion pound sector. Names like Garmin dominate, each with an wide array of different versions to cater to a range of budgets. Depending on how high tech the device you choose, prices can range from a hundred pounds to thousands of pounds. "It drives me insane, it's impossible to stop checking." "It comforts me… It acts as a supporter supporting me." "Please don't notify me about a poor sleep." A small sample of the responses people have shared from fellow tracker enthusiasts when I inquire what they feel about theirs. Many users are frequently questioning whether the information they're seeing is accurate. The Monitoring Conundrum My thoughts on my own device? Right now, annoying. It's reporting I'm not hitting my target, leading me to doubt whether the trees I'm passing under are blocking my satellite signal. A vast number of us strap these small devices onto our wrists and use them constantly, apparently at ease with the fact they're constantly tracking us. Gone are the days when we depended on them only to give us an idea of our pedometer reading. Today, they can track our nightly rest, blood pressure, heart rate variability (HRV), our VO2 max. It's a challenge to find a bodily function they don't track. But can they do what they say they do? And are the statistics we obsess over a faithful picture of our actual health? Do they improve our overall health, or do the multitude of metrics and cheerleading alerts just increase our daily stresses? Some users find the sheer number of functions on their smartwatches to be "excessive" at times. A Complicated Bond "I do get a quite preoccupied with mine," a wearer reveals. While she values how her device records her workouts, she finds some of its other functions "daunting" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a major life event. Prior to discovering she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch kept telling her she was not being productive enough. In a new phase, the watch insists her she's had a poor sleep score. "I have a young baby, I don't need to be informed I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly." Why doesn't she just remove it? "I could, I suppose, but I'm in this push-pull dynamic with it," she says. "I love it for its fitness insights, but I'm unsure whether the additional features it can now do is maybe excessive for me." How Do They Work? Every device of smartwatch has its own novel way of monitoring your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the most use sensors on the back of the watch. They commonly emit small, green LED lights onto your arm which can detect pulsation, identifying your pulse rate. More advanced devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that flows through the skin to gauge your nervous system activity. Expert Perspectives 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 device users into the "concerned but fine". He points out that some of the latest wearables can carry out tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how stable the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is erratic signals in the heart causing an uneven pulse. This does not mean someone is on the verge of a cardiac event, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more susceptible of a stroke in the long term. But how to make sense of these numbers is complicated. The expert worries that as more functions are incorporated, people may find it hard to fully comprehend their data. "I'm not entirely convinced that the ability to monitor so many things is such a good idea," he says. A professor studying cardiology concurs. Research into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of heart condition patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced greater stress and were "far more likely to use doctor's time". She noted a cycle with her patients - they saw a worrying figure on their watch. They became worried. Their BPM went up. They got even more concerned. They checked again, and their reading increased again. "Upon viewing numbers 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 self-fulfilling prophecy."