Could I Be Hooked on My Smartwatch?

A sense of feeling of anticipation. Visible is the chilled vapour coming from my competitors as they execute the "starting line" jiggle on the beginning point.

A quick flick of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local Saturday morning race and I'm serious. Three, two, one...

Hold on. I must sort my tracker. So does the runner beside me.

The person in the line sighs. I refuse to go until… yes! GPS ready, away I go.

In the mele, it's challenging to find a wrist without a fitness tracker on it. And this isn't only us runners who use them.

This is a booming, multi-billion pound industry. Brands like Apple Watch lead the market, featuring an extensive selection of various models to fit a range of budgets. According to how advanced the watch you select, prices can range from £100 to a significant investment.

"It makes me crazy, I'm unable to switch off."

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

"I wish it wouldn't say I've experienced a bad night's sleep."

A small sample of the responses I've received from fellow device users when I inquire what they feel about theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My thoughts on my own device? At this moment, irritating. It's indicating I'm off pace, causing me to question whether the overhead branches along my route are interfering with my GPS connection.

Countless individuals of us attach these little monitors onto our arms and keep them on constantly, apparently comfortable with the fact they're perpetually recording us.

Gone are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an idea of our daily steps. Now, they can track our sleep quality, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our VO2 max.

It's a challenge to find a physical metric they don't track.

But do they do what they claim to do? And are the data points we obsess over a faithful picture of reality? Do they improve our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the multitude of readings and cheerleading alerts just contribute to our everyday anxiety?

Addiction or Aid?

"I do get a quite fixated with mine," a wearer confesses.

While she appreciates how her device tracks her runs, she finds some of its other functions "excessive" at times - a feeling first discovered during a major life event.

Until she found out she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch kept telling her she was failing to be productive enough. Later on, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I am caring for a infant, I don't need to be notified my sleep was poor," she says. "That fact is perfectly well."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"It's possible, perhaps, but I'm in this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I value it for its exercise data, I sometimes question whether the additional features it can now do is maybe overkill for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Every device of smartwatch has its own novel way of monitoring your health metrics and analysing your data, but the most use detectors on the back of the watch.

They commonly emit minute LED lights onto your arm which can detect capillary action, detecting your BPM. More advanced devices detect changes in the electrical current that runs through the skin to gauge your stress levels.

A Fine Balance

A data scientist says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the ever-evolving tech could potentially aid early diagnosis, "spotting abnormalities before we show symptoms", it could also turn us device users into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can carry out tests like heart rhythm analysis, which regularly monitor how normal the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is abnormal signals in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is imminently going to suffer a heart attack, 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 make sense of these numbers is complicated. The expert fears that as further capabilities are added, people may struggle to fully comprehend their data.

"I have some doubts that having the capacity to monitor so many things is such a good idea," he says.

A clinical psychologist studying wearable tech echoes this sentiment. A study 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 cardiac function experienced heightened worry and were "far more likely to use doctor's time".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they saw a worrying figure on their watch. They grew concerned. Their pulse went up. They got more worried. They checked again, and their reading rose further.

"If we see stats about ourselves that we lack context for then, understandably, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We check, we check again - it becomes a feedback loop."