Is It Possible I'm Dependent on My Smartwatch?

There's a building tension. I can see the chilled vapour emanating from my rivals as they execute the "pre-race" jiggle on the beginning point.

A swift twitch of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local 5km community parkrun and I mean business. Three, two, one...

Hold on. I must adjust my device. The same goes for the person beside me.

The person in the line tuts. I refuse to go until… done! Signal acquired, I'm off.

In the mele, it's difficult to find a wrist without a fitness tracker on it. And it's not just us participants who wear them.

This is a explosive, massive industry. Brands like Apple Watch are prevalent, all offering an wide range of diverse devices to cater to a variety of lifestyles. According to how high tech the watch you select, prices can range from an affordable sum to a significant investment.

"It drives me insane, I'm unable to stop checking."

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

"Please don't notify me about a bad night's sleep."

Just some of the responses I've had from like-minded smartwatch wearers when I inquire what they feel about theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on mine? Currently, annoying. It's reporting my speed is wrong, making me wonder whether the foliage along my route are disrupting my location tracking.

A vast number of us fasten these compact monitors onto our arms and keep them on all day and night, ostensibly at ease with the fact they're perpetually recording us.

Long past are the days when we depended on them only to give us an estimation of our daily steps. Today, they can track our sleep quality, blood pressure, 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 claim to do? And are the data points we obsess over a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they enhance our overall health, or do the plethora of metrics and motivational messages just contribute to our daily stresses?

Addiction or Aid?

"I do get a bit fixated with mine," a wearer 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 significant period.

Until she found out she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch kept telling her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. Later on, the watch frequently reports her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I have a six-month old, there's no point to be notified my sleep was poor," she says. "I'm acutely aware perfectly well."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she says. "I love it for its exercise data, but I'm unsure whether the additional features it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

Different brands of smartwatch has its own unique way of measuring your bodily functions and interpreting your data, but the most use detectors on the underside of the watch.

They commonly project minute LED lights onto your wrist which can detect capillary action, recording your BPM. Higher-end devices detect changes in the skin conductance that runs through the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the continuously improving tech could realistically aid early diagnosis, "spotting abnormalities before we feel unwell", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can carry out tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which constantly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is irregular electrical activity in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not mean someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more susceptible of a blood clot in the future.

But how to make sense of these readings is not straightforward. The expert fears that as more functions are introduced, people may not be able to fully comprehend their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that the ability to monitor so many metrics is such a good idea," he says.

A health researcher studying wearable tech agrees. Her work into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of individuals with health issues suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced increased anxiety and were "far more likely to use medical services".

She observed a vicious circle with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They felt anxious. Their heart rate went up. They got increasingly anxious. They checked again, and their heart rate rose further.

"When people are presented with data about ourselves that we don't really understand then, naturally, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We check, we re-check - it becomes a feedback loop."