Is It Possible I'm Dependent on My Smartwatch?

There's a building tension. Visible is the cold breath exhaled by my competitors as they execute the "pre-race" wiggle on the beginning point.

A rapid movement of the hips.

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

Oh, hang on. I must sort my tracker. The same goes for the person alongside me.

The person in the line expresses impatience. I won't start until… yes! Signal acquired, I'm off.

Amidst the crowd, it's challenging to spot a arm without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us participants who wear them.

This is a booming, multi-billion dollar industry. Companies like Samsung Galaxy are prevalent, each with an broad array of diverse versions to suit a variety of lifestyles. Based on how high tech the device you choose, price tags can start from an affordable sum to a small fortune.

"It makes me crazy, I can't relax."

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

"Please don't notify me about a poor sleep."

A small sample of the comments I've received from like-minded tracker enthusiasts when I question what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My current opinion on my own device? Currently, irritating. It's telling me I'm not hitting my target, making me wonder whether the trees I'm passing under are disrupting my location tracking.

Millions of us fasten these small devices onto our arms and use them all day and night, apparently at ease with the fact they're constantly tracking us.

A distant memory are the days when we relied on them exclusively to give us an idea of our step count. Currently, they can track our sleep quality, heart rate, oxygen saturation, our body battery.

It's tricky to find a physical metric they fail to monitor.

But do they do what they claim to do? And are the data points we scrutinise a true reflection of our actual health? Do they enhance our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the avalanche of measurements and cheerleading alerts just increase our daily stresses?

Addiction or Aid?

"I become a a little fixated with mine," an individual confesses.

While she appreciates how her device monitors her workouts, she finds some of its other capabilities "excessive" at times - a feeling first discovered during a significant period.

Before she realised she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. Later on, the watch frequently reports her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a six-month old, it's unnecessary for me to be notified I've not slept," she says. "That fact is only too well."

Why doesn't she just take it off?

"I could, theoretically, but I have this love-hate relationship with it," she continues. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, I sometimes question whether the myriad other functions it can now do is perhaps excessive for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Different brands of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of monitoring your vitals and interpreting your data, but the most use sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They commonly emit minute LED lights onto your arm which can observe capillary action, detecting your pulse rate. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the bioimpedance that runs through the skin to get an idea of your recovery state.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the rapidly advancing tech could realistically aid early diagnosis, "spotting abnormalities before we notice anything", it could also turn us the tracked into the "worried well".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can conduct tests like heart rhythm analysis, which regularly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is abnormal signals in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

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

But how to make sense of these numbers is complex. The expert fears that as additional features are introduced, people may struggle to fully comprehend their data.

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

A professor specialising in wearable tech echoes this sentiment. Research into the effect of wearable tech on a cohort of cardiovascular patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced greater stress and were "far more likely to use doctor's time".

She observed a vicious circle with her patients - they noticed a alarming metric on their watch. They grew concerned. Their pulse rose. They got more worried. They looked a second time, and their anxiety increased again.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, understandably, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a vicious cycle."