🔗 Share this article

A sense of nervous excitement. Apparent is the chilled vapour coming from my competitors as they perform the "starting line" jiggle on the beginning point.

A swift flick of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local weekly parkrun event and I'm focused. It's almost time...

Hold on. I need to start my tracker. As does the person beside me.

The person waiting sighs. I refuse to go until… done! Connection established, away I go.

During the scramble, it's hard to find a person without a wearable on it. And this extends beyond us participants who wear them.

It's a thriving, massive sector. Brands like Apple Watch are prevalent, featuring an wide selection of various models to fit a range of lifestyles. According to how feature-packed the model you choose, price tags can range from £100 to a small fortune.

"It makes me crazy, it's impossible to relax."

"It reassures me… It's like a companion encouraging me."

"Please don't notify me I've had a bad night's sleep."

A handful of the reactions I've had from other device users when I inquire what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My current opinion on my own device? Currently, annoying. It's reporting I'm off pace, causing me to question whether the trees I'm running below are blocking my GPS connection.

A vast number of us attach these small monitors onto our arms and use them 24/7, ostensibly at ease with the fact they're continuously monitoring us.

Gone are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an estimation of our step count. Today, they can track our nightly rest, stress levels, glucose levels, our VO2 max.

It's tricky to find a health indicator they don't track.

But are they able to do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we scrutinise a accurate representation of reality? Do they improve our overall health, or do the multitude of metrics and cheerleading alerts just increase our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

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

While she values how her device monitors her workouts, she finds some of its other functions "excessive" at times - a feeling first discovered during a significant period.

Until she found out she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was not being productive enough. Now, the watch frequently reports her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I am caring for a young baby, there's no point to be notified my sleep was poor," she says. "That fact is perfectly well."

Is it not possible to just remove it?

"I suppose I could, I suppose, but I'm in this complicated dynamic with it," she continues. "I appreciate it for its fitness insights, but I'm unsure whether the additional features it can now do is perhaps excessive for me."

Inside the Device

Each model of smartwatch has its own unique way of tracking your bodily functions and interpreting your data, but the most use sensors on the underside of the watch.

They typically shine small, green LED lights onto your arm which can observe blood flow, recording your BPM. Sophisticated devices measure changes in the electrical current that passes over the skin to assess your stress levels.

Expert Perspectives

A professor says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the ever-evolving tech could potentially aid early diagnosis, "spotting abnormalities before we feel unwell", it could also turn us device users into the "worried well".

He points out that newer wearables can carry out tests like heart rhythm analysis, which continuously monitor how healthy the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is irregular electrical activity in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not mean someone is imminently going to suffer a heart attack, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more vulnerable of a blood clot in the years to come.

But how to understand these numbers is not straightforward. The expert worries that as additional features are added, people may find it hard to fully understand their data.

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

A clinical psychologist specialising in wearable tech concurs. Her work into the impact of wearable tech on a set of heart condition patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "far more likely to use medical services".

She identified a vicious circle with her patients - they spotted a alarming metric on their watch. They felt anxious. Their pulse increased. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety went up again.

"If we see data about ourselves that we don't really understand then, of course, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we check again - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."