Could I Be Dependent on My Smartwatch?

A sense of building tension. Visible is the cold breath emanating from my rivals as they perform the "starting line" jiggle on the starting line.

A quick flick of the hips.

I'm participating in my local Saturday morning race and I'm serious. It's almost time...

Hold on. I need to adjust my tracker. So does the person beside me.

The person behind us tuts. I refuse to go until… there! GPS ready, I'm off.

During the scramble, it's hard to find a wrist without a wearable on it. And it's not just us runners who use them.

We're witnessing a thriving, multi-billion pound market. Names like Garmin lead the market, each with an wide array of diverse models to cater to a range of lifestyles. Based on how high tech the device you go for, price tags can range from an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

"It drives me insane, I'm unable to switch off."

"It reassures me… It feels like a companion guiding me."

"Please don't notify me I've experienced a restless night."

A handful of the reactions people have shared from fellow device users when I inquire what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on my own device? At this moment, annoying. It's reporting my speed is wrong, leading me to doubt whether the overhead branches I'm passing under are blocking my location tracking.

Millions of us fasten these little monitors onto our wrists and wear them all day and night, apparently unconcerned with the fact they're perpetually tracking us.

A distant memory are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an estimation of our step count. Currently, they can track our sleep quality, stress levels, glucose levels, our recovery score.

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

But can they do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we obsess over a accurate representation of reality? Do they boost our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the multitude of readings and cheerleading alerts just increase our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

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

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

Prior to discovering she could change its configuration, her smartwatch kept telling her she was not being energetic enough. Now, the watch insists her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I have a infant, it's unnecessary for me to be told I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware perfectly well."

Why doesn't she just remove it?

"It's possible, theoretically, but I'm in this complicated dynamic with it," she says. "I love it for its exercise data, I just wonder whether the additional features it can now do is maybe overkill for me."

Inside the Device

Different brands of smartwatch has its own novel way of monitoring your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the vast bulk use detectors on the back of the watch.

They typically shine minute LED lights onto your skin which can monitor capillary action, recording your BPM. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that runs through the skin to gauge your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

A data scientist says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could potentially aid early diagnosis, "detecting disease before we notice anything", it could also turn us the tracked into the "worried well".

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

This does not necessarily indicate someone is on the verge of a heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more susceptible of a heart problem in the long term.

But how to understand these figures is complicated. The expert concerns that as additional features are incorporated, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data.

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

A clinical psychologist studying patient behaviour concurs. Her work into the impact of wearable tech on a set of cardiovascular patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced greater stress and were "more inclined to use healthcare resources".

She noted a cycle with her patients - they noticed a alarming metric on their watch. They grew concerned. Their pulse rose. They got increasingly anxious. They checked again, and their reading went up again.

"If we see data about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we re-check - it becomes a feedback loop."