🔗 Share this article

An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. I can see the frosty air coming from my rivals as they perform the "pre-race" jiggle on the starting line.

A swift flick of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local weekly parkrun event and I'm serious. The countdown begins...

Wait a second. I need to adjust my device. So does the guy alongside me.

The person waiting expresses impatience. I refuse to go until… done! GPS ready, I'm off.

During the scramble, it's hard to see a wrist without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us runners who rely on them.

We're witnessing a thriving, multi-billion pound industry. Brands like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, all offering an wide selection of various devices to suit a range of budgets. Depending on how advanced the device you go for, price tags can start from a hundred pounds to a small fortune.

"I find it infuriating, I can't switch off."

"It comforts me… It acts as a companion supporting me."

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

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

The Data Dilemma

My feelings on mine? At this moment, irritating. It's indicating I'm off pace, leading me to doubt whether the trees I'm passing under are interfering with my location tracking.

Countless individuals of us fasten these little gadgets onto our wrists and use them 24/7, seemingly unconcerned with the fact they're constantly recording us.

A distant memory are the days when we used them solely to give us an rough count of our daily steps. Currently, they can track our sleep quality, heart rate, oxygen saturation, our recovery score.

It's a challenge to find a health indicator they aren't designed to measure.

But are they able to do what they say they do? And are the statistics we obsess over a true reflection of the truth? Do they improve our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of metrics and cheerleading alerts just contribute to our everyday anxiety?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I find myself getting a a little preoccupied with mine," an individual confesses.

While she loves how her device tracks her exercise, she finds some of its other functions "daunting" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a major life event.

Until she found out she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was failing to be productive enough. Now, the watch frequently reports her she's had a restless night.

"I've got a young baby, I don't need to be notified I'm tired," she says. "I know that only too well."

Why doesn't she just take it off?

"I could, perhaps, but I have this push-pull dynamic with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its fitness insights, I sometimes question whether the additional features it can now do is perhaps too much for me."

Inside the Device

Different brands of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of measuring your health metrics and interpreting your data, but the most use sensors on the back of the watch.

They usually project minute LED lights onto your arm which can monitor pulsation, detecting your heartbeat. More advanced devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to gauge your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could potentially save lives, "identifying issues before we show symptoms", it could also turn us the tracked into the "worried well".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can perform tests like heart rhythm analysis, which continuously monitor how stable the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic signals in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not mean someone is imminently going to suffer a heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more at risk of a blood clot in the long term.

But how to interpret these readings is complex. The expert fears that as further capabilities are added, people may not be able to fully understand their data.

"I have some doubts that being able to monitor so much data is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A clinical psychologist studying patient behaviour echoes this sentiment. Research into the influence of wearable tech on a set of individuals with health issues suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "had a higher tendency to use doctor's time".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they saw a alarming metric on their watch. They became worried. Their pulse rose. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their reading increased again.

"When people are presented with stats about ourselves that we don't really understand then, understandably, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We check, we re-check - it becomes a feedback loop."