Could I Be Hooked on My Wearable Device?

There's a nervous excitement. Apparent is the frosty air exhaled by my fellow runners as they perform the "about to run" shuffle on the start line.

A rapid movement of the hips.

I'm at my local 5km community parkrun and I'm serious. It's almost time...

Hold on. I have to adjust my watch. The same goes for the person beside me.

The person behind us sighs. I'm not moving until… yes! Connection established, away I go.

In the mele, it's difficult to spot a wrist without a wearable on it. And it's not just us runners who rely on them.

We're witnessing a explosive, multi-billion pound sector. Names like Apple Watch are prevalent, each with an extensive selection of different versions to fit a range of budgets. Depending on how high tech the device you select, prices can start from an affordable sum to a significant investment.

"It makes me crazy, it's impossible to switch off."

"It provides solace… It acts as a friend encouraging me."

"Stop telling me I've experienced a bad night's sleep."

A handful of the responses I've received from other smartwatch wearers when I inquire what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My current opinion on mine? At this moment, frustrating. It's telling me I'm off pace, making me wonder whether the trees I'm passing under are blocking my satellite signal.

A vast number of us strap these small devices onto our wrists and keep them on all day and night, seemingly at ease with the fact they're constantly recording us.

Gone are the days when we relied on them solely to give us an estimation of our step count. Today, they can track our sleep patterns, blood pressure, heart rate variability (HRV), our body battery.

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

But do they do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we scrutinise a faithful picture of reality? Do they boost our daily wellness, or do the multitude of metrics and cheerleading alerts just increase our everyday anxiety?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I do get a quite obsessed with mine," an individual reveals.

While she loves how her device monitors her exercise, she finds some of its other capabilities "excessive" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a significant period.

Before she realised she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently productive enough. In a new phase, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a infant, I don't need to be informed I'm tired," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly."

Is it not possible to just take it off?

"I could, I suppose, but I'm in this complicated dynamic with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, I just wonder whether all the other things it can now do is perhaps too much for me."

Inside the Device

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

They typically emit minute LED lights onto your skin which can detect pulsation, detecting your BPM. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the bioimpedance that flows through the skin to assess your recovery state.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the ever-evolving tech could actually aid early diagnosis, "identifying issues before we feel unwell", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that newer wearables can conduct tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which constantly monitor how normal the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is irregular electrical activity in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not mean someone is on the verge of a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more susceptible of a stroke in the years to come.

But how to make sense of these readings is complex. The expert fears that as further capabilities are incorporated, people may struggle to fully understand their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that being able to monitor so much data is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A clinical psychologist focusing on patient behaviour echoes this sentiment. Research into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of cardiovascular patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced increased anxiety and were "far more likely to use healthcare resources".

She noted a pattern with her patients - they saw a alarming metric on their watch. They felt anxious. Their pulse increased. They got more worried. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety rose further.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, naturally, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We look, we obsess - it becomes a vicious cycle."