🔗 Share this article Could I Be Hooked on My Wearable Device? Countless individuals end up consulting their trackers innumerable times in the middle of a event. A sense of nervous excitement. Visible is the frosty air exhaled by my competitors as they execute the "pre-race" shuffle on the beginning point. A rapid flick of the hips. I'm at my local 5km community parkrun and I mean business. Three, two, one... Oh, hang on. I need to start my watch. So does the guy alongside me. The person behind us tuts. I won't start until… there! Connection established, away I go. Amidst the crowd, it's difficult to find a arm without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us athletes who use them. It's a booming, multi-billion pound market. Companies like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, all offering an wide array of diverse devices to suit a spectrum of budgets. Based on how feature-packed the watch you select, costs can vary between an affordable sum to a small fortune. "It makes me crazy, I'm unable to stop checking." "It reassures me… It acts as a companion guiding me." "Stop telling me about a bad night's sleep." A small sample of the reactions I've had from fellow smartwatch wearers when I question what they think of theirs. Many users are frequently questioning whether the metrics on their watch is accurate. The Data Dilemma My thoughts on mine? Right now, frustrating. It's telling me I'm not hitting my target, causing me to question whether the overhead branches I'm running below are disrupting my satellite signal. A vast number of us strap these compact monitors onto our arms and wear them 24/7, seemingly at ease with the fact they're perpetually recording us. Long past are the days when we relied on them exclusively to give us an rough count of our pedometer reading. Now, they can analyse our sleep quality, blood pressure, heart rate variability (HRV), our VO2 max. It's tricky to find a health indicator they fail to monitor. But do they do what they say they do? And are the statistics we scrutinise a accurate representation of reality? Do they enhance our overall health, or do the plethora of measurements and motivational messages just contribute to our daily stresses? Some users find the abundance of functions on their smartwatches to be "too much" at times. A Complicated Bond "I become a bit fixated with mine," one user reveals. While she values how her device records her runs, she finds some of its other functions "excessive" at times - a feeling initially realised during a pregnancy. Until she found out she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently active enough. Later on, the watch keeps telling her she's had a poor sleep score. "I am caring for a young baby, I don't need to be notified I'm tired," she says. "That fact is perfectly well." Couldn't she just stop wearing it? "I suppose I could, I suppose, but I'm in this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I love it for its fitness insights, I just wonder whether all the other things it can now do is possibly overkill for me." The Technology Behind the Tracking Different brands of smartwatch has its own novel way of measuring your health metrics and analysing your data, but the majority use optical sensors on the reverse of the watch. They typically emit minute LED lights onto your wrist which can monitor blood flow, recording your heartbeat. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the bioimpedance that passes over the skin to assess your recovery state. The Professional Viewpoint A professor says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the continuously improving tech could actually prevent illness, "identifying issues before we feel unwell", it could also turn us the tracked into the "worried well". He points out that the most advanced wearables can conduct tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which regularly monitor how stable the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is irregular electrical activity in the heart causing an uneven pulse. This does not mean someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an advance notice they might be more at risk of a blood clot in the long term. But how to interpret these figures is complicated. The expert fears that as additional features are added, people may not be able to fully comprehend their data. "I have some doubts that the ability to monitor so many things is such a positive development," he says. A professor focusing on patient behaviour agrees. Research into the impact of wearable tech on a cohort of individuals with health issues suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "far more likely to use healthcare resources". She observed a cycle with her patients - they noticed a alarming metric on their watch. They became worried. Their BPM increased. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their reading went up again. "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 obsess - it becomes a feedback loop."