🔗 Share this article

There's a building tension. Visible is the chilled vapour emanating from my competitors as they do the "pre-race" wiggle on the beginning point.

A quick movement of the hips.

I'm at my local Saturday morning race and I mean business. The countdown begins...

Oh, hang on. I must start my watch. So does the guy beside me.

The person waiting expresses impatience. I won't start until… yes! Connection established, I'm off.

In the mele, it's hard to spot a wrist without a fitness tracker on it. And this extends beyond us participants who rely on them.

It's a explosive, multi-billion dollar market. Names like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, each with an wide selection of diverse devices to suit a variety of lifestyles. Depending on how advanced the watch you select, prices can start from an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

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

"It reassures me… It acts as a friend encouraging me."

"I wish it wouldn't say I've had a restless night."

A small sample of the reactions I've received from other smartwatch wearers when I ask what they feel about theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My current opinion on mine? Right now, irritating. It's indicating my speed is wrong, making me wonder whether the foliage I'm running below are blocking my GPS connection.

Millions of us fasten these compact gadgets onto our wrists and use them constantly, seemingly comfortable with the fact they're perpetually monitoring us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them exclusively to give us an rough count of our pedometer reading. Today, they can track our sleep quality, heart rate, glucose levels, our recovery score.

It's a challenge to find a bodily function they aren't designed to measure.

But are they able to do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we obsess over a true reflection of reality? Do they improve our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the multitude of measurements and motivational messages just add to our everyday anxiety?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I do get a a little preoccupied with mine," one user confesses.

While she appreciates how her device records her runs, she finds some of its other functions "daunting" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a pregnancy.

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch kept telling her she was being insufficiently active enough. Later on, the watch keeps telling her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I've got a young baby, I don't need to be informed my sleep was poor," she says. "That fact is only too well."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I'm in this complicated dynamic with it," she explains. "I love it for its fitness insights, I just wonder whether the myriad other functions it can now do is perhaps too much for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Each model of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of monitoring your health metrics and analysing your data, but the most use sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They typically project minute LED lights onto your skin which can monitor pulsation, recording your pulse rate. Higher-end devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to assess your stress levels.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the ever-evolving tech could realistically aid early diagnosis, "detecting disease before we notice anything", it could also turn us device users into the "worried well".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can perform tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how normal the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is erratic impulses in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is imminently going to suffer a heart attack, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more vulnerable of a stroke in the future.

But how to understand these figures is complex. The expert concerns that as further capabilities are introduced, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

"I have some doubts that the ability to monitor so many metrics is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A professor focusing on patient behaviour echoes this sentiment. A study into the effect of wearable tech on a cohort of cardiovascular patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "more inclined to use healthcare resources".

She identified a pattern with her patients - they spotted a worrying figure on their watch. They became worried. Their heart rate rose. They got more worried. They re-examined the data, and their heart rate rose further.

"If we see numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, understandably, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We look, we re-check - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."