Am I Hooked on My Smartwatch?

An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. I can see the chilled vapour coming from my rivals as they do the "about to run" shuffle on the start line.

A rapid twitch of the hips.

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

Wait a second. I must start my tracker. So does the guy alongside me.

The person behind us expresses impatience. I refuse to go until… there! Connection established, and I'm running.

Amidst the crowd, it's difficult to find a person without a wearable on it. And this isn't only us participants who use them.

We're witnessing a explosive, massive industry. Brands like Garmin lead the market, all offering an wide range of different versions to fit a variety of lifestyles. Based on how advanced the model you choose, prices can vary between £100 to thousands of pounds.

"It drives me insane, I can't switch off."

"It comforts me… It acts as a friend guiding me."

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

A small sample of the reactions people have shared from fellow device users when I inquire what they feel about theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My feelings on my own device? At this moment, frustrating. It's telling me I'm off pace, causing me to question whether the trees I'm running below are interfering with my location tracking.

A vast number of us fasten these compact monitors onto our wrists and wear them constantly, seemingly at ease with the fact they're continuously tracking us.

Gone are the days when we used them solely to give us an estimation of our daily steps. Now, they can track our sleep patterns, stress levels, glucose levels, our recovery score.

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 obsess over a accurate representation of the truth? Do they improve our overall health, or do the plethora of measurements and cheerleading alerts just increase our sense of overwhelm?

A Complicated Bond

"I find myself getting a a little fixated with mine," a wearer reveals.

While she loves how her device monitors her runs, she finds some of its other features "excessive" at times - a feeling initially realised during a significant period.

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 bad night's sleep.

"I am caring for a six-month old, there's no point to be notified my sleep was poor," she says. "That fact is only too well."

Couldn't she just remove it?

"It's possible, I suppose, but I have this love-hate relationship with it," she continues. "I value it for its workout tracking, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Every device of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of monitoring your vitals and interpreting your data, but the most use detectors on the reverse of the watch.

They commonly project small, green LED lights onto your wrist which can detect blood flow, detecting your pulse rate. More advanced devices detect changes in the electrical current that runs through the skin to gauge your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

One expert says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the continuously improving tech could actually save lives, "spotting abnormalities before we feel unwell", it could also turn us device users into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that newer wearables can carry out tests like medical-grade monitoring, which continuously monitor how stable 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 cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more at risk of a heart problem in the years to come.

But how to understand these numbers is not straightforward. The expert worries that as further capabilities are introduced, people may not be able to fully contextualise their data.

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

A health researcher specialising in wearable tech agrees. Research into the effect 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 heightened worry and were "more inclined to use healthcare resources".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they noticed a concerning reading on their watch. They felt anxious. Their heart rate increased. They got more worried. They re-examined the data, 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 look, we re-check - it becomes a feedback loop."