🔗 Share this article

An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. Visible is the frosty air coming from my fellow runners as they perform the "pre-race" jiggle on the beginning point.

A quick movement of the hips.

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

Oh, hang on. I need to sort my device. As does the person alongside me.

The person in the line sighs. I won't start until… there! Connection established, and I'm running.

Amidst the crowd, it's difficult to spot a arm without a wearable on it. And this extends beyond us athletes who use them.

We're witnessing a explosive, multi-billion pound sector. Names like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, featuring an wide array of diverse versions to suit a variety of budgets. According to how advanced the watch you go for, price tags can start from an affordable sum to a small fortune.

"It drives me insane, it's impossible to relax."

"It provides solace… It's like a companion supporting me."

"I wish it wouldn't say I've experienced a poor sleep."

A handful of the comments I've received from other smartwatch wearers when I ask what they their opinion is on theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My feelings on my own device? At this moment, annoying. It's reporting I'm not hitting my target, leading me to doubt whether the foliage I'm passing under are blocking my location tracking.

Millions of us strap these compact gadgets onto our wrists and keep them on constantly, ostensibly at ease with the fact they're continuously recording us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an estimation of our step count. Now, they can track our nightly rest, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our body battery.

It's a challenge to find a bodily function they fail to monitor.

But are they able to do what they claim to do? And are the data points we obsess over a accurate representation of the truth? Do they improve our daily wellness, or do the plethora of metrics and motivational messages just add to our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I find myself getting a bit fixated with mine," one user reveals.

While she values how her device records her runs, she finds some of its other capabilities "excessive" at times - a feeling initially realised during a pregnancy.

Before she realised she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being active enough. Later on, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a six-month old, I don't need to be informed I'm tired," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly."

Couldn't she just remove it?

"I could, perhaps, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she explains. "I love it for its exercise data, I just wonder whether all the other things it can now do is maybe excessive for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Different brands of smartwatch has its own unique way of measuring your health metrics and processing your data, but the most use sensors on the underside of the watch.

They typically shine minute LED lights onto your skin which can detect capillary action, identifying your BPM. More advanced devices analyse changes in the bioimpedance that runs through the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

A data scientist says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the continuously improving tech could realistically aid early diagnosis, "spotting abnormalities before we notice anything", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that newer wearables can conduct tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which continuously 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 irregular heartbeat.

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 susceptible of a heart problem in the long term.

But how to make sense of these readings is not straightforward. The expert fears that as additional features are introduced, people may struggle to fully understand their data.

"I have some doubts that having the capacity to monitor so much data is such a positive development," he says.

A health researcher studying wearable tech concurs. Her work into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of individuals with health issues suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "more inclined to use medical services".

She noted a vicious circle with her patients - they saw a concerning reading on their watch. They grew concerned. Their BPM went up. They got even more concerned. They checked again, and their heart rate increased again.

"If we see data about ourselves that we don't really understand then, understandably, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a feedback loop."