🔗 Share this article

An atmosphere of building tension. I can see the frosty air exhaled by my rivals as they execute the "pre-race" shuffle on the start line.

A swift movement of the hips.

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

Oh, hang on. I have to adjust my tracker. The same goes for the person next to me.

The person waiting expresses impatience. I won't start until… yes! GPS ready, away I go.

In the mele, it's hard to spot a arm without a fitness tracker on it. And it's not just us runners who rely on them.

We're witnessing a thriving, massive sector. Companies like Samsung Galaxy are prevalent, featuring an extensive range of diverse devices to cater to a spectrum of lifestyles. Depending on how high tech the model you go for, costs can range from a hundred pounds to thousands of pounds.

"It makes me crazy, I'm unable to switch off."

"It provides solace… It feels like a supporter supporting me."

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

A small sample of the reactions I've received from fellow device users when I question what they feel about theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My feelings on my own device? At this moment, annoying. It's telling me I'm not hitting my target, making me wonder whether the overhead branches along my route are disrupting my location tracking.

Millions of us attach these compact devices onto our wrists and wear them constantly, seemingly unconcerned with the fact they're constantly recording us.

Long past are the days when we depended on them only to give us an idea of our daily steps. Currently, they can analyse our sleep quality, stress levels, heart rate variability (HRV), our recovery score.

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

But do they do what they say they do? And are the statistics we analyse a true reflection of the truth? Do they enhance our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the avalanche of measurements and constant notifications just increase our daily stresses?

A Love-Hate Relationship

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

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

Before she realised she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch kept telling her she was not being active enough. In a new phase, the watch insists her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I have a young baby, I don't need to be notified I've not slept," she says. "I know that only too well."

Is it not possible to just take it off?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I'm in this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I love it for its exercise data, I just wonder whether all the other things it can now do is maybe too much for me."

Inside the Device

Each model of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of measuring your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the most use optical sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They usually emit minute LED lights onto your arm which can detect pulsation, detecting your heartbeat. Higher-end devices detect changes in the skin conductance that flows through the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

One expert says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the continuously improving tech could realistically aid early diagnosis, "detecting disease before we feel unwell", it could also turn us device users into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can conduct tests like medical-grade monitoring, which regularly monitor how normal the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is erratic electrical activity in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not automatically signal someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more at risk of a heart problem in the long term.

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

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

A professor specialising in cardiology agrees. Research into the influence of wearable tech on a specific group of cardiovascular patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced greater stress and were "more inclined to use medical services".

She noted a pattern with her patients - they saw a alarming metric on their watch. They became worried. Their pulse went up. They got more worried. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety went up again.

"Upon viewing data about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, of course, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a feedback loop."