🔗 Share this article

An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. I can see the cold breath exhaled by my fellow runners as they perform the "about to run" shuffle on the starting line.

A quick flick of the hips.

I'm participating in my local Saturday morning race and I mean business. Three, two, one...

Wait a second. I need to adjust my tracker. As does the runner next to me.

The person waiting expresses impatience. I'm not moving until… there! Connection established, and I'm running.

In the mele, it's hard to see a arm without a fitness tracker on it. And it's not just us athletes who use them.

It's a thriving, multi-billion dollar market. Names like Apple Watch lead the market, each with an broad array of diverse models to suit a variety of needs. Based on how high tech the watch you choose, price tags can range from £100 to thousands of pounds.

"I find it infuriating, I'm unable to stop checking."

"It comforts me… It's like a friend supporting me."

"Please don't notify me about a poor sleep."

A handful of the comments people have shared from like-minded device users when I inquire what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My current opinion on mine? Currently, frustrating. It's indicating I'm off pace, leading me to doubt whether the foliage I'm passing under are interfering with my GPS connection.

Millions of us strap these little monitors onto our wrists and keep them on 24/7, apparently comfortable with the fact they're perpetually recording us.

Gone are the days when we depended on them exclusively to give us an estimation of our pedometer reading. Currently, they can analyse our sleep quality, blood pressure, heart rate variability (HRV), our body battery.

It's tricky to find a physical metric they fail to monitor.

But are they able to do what they say they do? And are the statistics we analyse a true reflection of reality? Do they boost our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the avalanche of readings and constant notifications just increase our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I find myself getting a bit preoccupied with mine," an individual reveals.

While she loves how her device monitors her runs, she finds some of its other features "overwhelming" at times - a feeling first discovered during a pregnancy.

Before she realised she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently productive enough. Now, the watch frequently reports her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I've got a young baby, I don't need to be told my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that perfectly well."

Couldn't she just remove it?

"I could, I suppose, but I have this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, I just wonder whether all the other things it can now do is maybe excessive for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Each model of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of tracking your bodily functions and processing your data, but the most use sensors on the back of the watch.

They commonly emit small, green LED lights onto your skin which can observe blood flow, recording your pulse rate. More advanced devices analyse changes in the bioimpedance that flows through the skin to get an idea of your stress levels.

Expert Perspectives

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the ever-evolving tech could realistically save lives, "detecting disease before we feel unwell", it could also turn us device users into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can perform tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which regularly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is irregular signals in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not mean someone is on the verge of a cardiac event, but it can give an advance notice they might be more at risk of a heart problem in the years to come.

But how to understand these figures is complex. The expert concerns that as more functions are added, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

"I remain sceptical that the ability to monitor so many metrics is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A health researcher focusing on wearable tech echoes this sentiment. A study into the effect of wearable tech on a cohort of heart condition patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced increased anxiety and were "far more likely to use medical services".

She identified a cycle with her patients - they spotted a concerning reading on their watch. They became worried. Their BPM went up. They got even more concerned. They re-examined the data, and their reading rose further.

"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 monitor, we check again - it becomes a vicious cycle."