🔗 Share this article

An atmosphere of nervous excitement. Visible is the frosty air emanating from my fellow runners as they do the "pre-race" wiggle on the starting line.

A swift twitch of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local 5km community parkrun and I mean business. The countdown begins...

Wait a second. I have to adjust my device. The same goes for the guy next to me.

The person in the line tuts. I'm not moving until… yes! Signal acquired, and I'm running.

During the scramble, it's hard to spot a arm without a wearable on it. And this extends beyond us runners who use them.

This is a booming, multi-billion pound market. Companies like Samsung Galaxy dominate, all offering an extensive array of different devices to cater to a range of needs. Depending on how advanced the watch you select, costs can vary between a hundred pounds to a significant investment.

"I find it infuriating, I can't relax."

"It reassures me… It feels like a supporter guiding me."

"Stop telling me about a bad night's sleep."

A small sample of the reactions I've received from like-minded tracker enthusiasts when I inquire what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My feelings on mine? At this moment, frustrating. It's indicating I'm not hitting my target, causing me to question whether the trees I'm running below are disrupting my location tracking.

Millions of us strap these little monitors onto our arms and wear them 24/7, apparently comfortable with the fact they're perpetually tracking us.

Gone are the days when we relied on them exclusively to give us an idea of our daily steps. Currently, they can analyse our sleep quality, stress levels, glucose levels, our recovery score.

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

But do they do what they say they do? And are the numbers we obsess over a accurate representation of the truth? Do they enhance our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the avalanche of measurements and motivational messages just contribute to our everyday anxiety?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I find myself getting a a little obsessed with mine," a wearer confesses.

While she loves how her device monitors her runs, she finds some of its other capabilities "overwhelming" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a significant period.

Prior to discovering she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was being insufficiently active enough. In a new phase, the watch keeps telling her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I am caring for a infant, there's no point to be notified my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that only too well."

Why doesn't she just remove it?

"I could, theoretically, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she continues. "I love it for its exercise data, I just wonder whether the myriad other functions it can now do is possibly too much for me."

Inside the Device

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

They commonly shine small, green LED lights onto your arm which can detect pulsation, detecting your pulse rate. Higher-end devices measure changes in the skin conductance that flows through the skin to get an idea of your recovery state.

Expert Perspectives

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could potentially prevent illness, "identifying issues before we feel unwell", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can conduct tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which continuously monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is irregular impulses in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not mean someone is about to have a cardiac event, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more vulnerable of a heart problem in the years to come.

But how to interpret these figures is complex. The expert fears that as more functions are incorporated, people may struggle to fully understand their data.

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

A health researcher specialising in cardiology concurs. Her work into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of cardiovascular patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced increased anxiety and were "far more likely to use healthcare resources".

She observed a cycle with her patients - they saw a worrying figure on their watch. They became worried. Their pulse increased. They got more worried. They looked a second time, and their anxiety increased again.

"If we see data about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, of course, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we re-check - it becomes a feedback loop."