🔗 Share this article

There's a nervous excitement. I can see the cold breath coming from my competitors as they do the "about to run" shuffle on the start line.

A rapid twitch of the hips.

I'm participating in my local Saturday morning race and I mean business. Three, two, one...

Hold on. I have to adjust my device. The same goes for the guy next to me.

The person in the line tuts. I won't start until… there! Signal acquired, away I go.

During the scramble, it's difficult to see a wrist without a wearable on it. And it's not just us athletes who rely on them.

We're witnessing a explosive, massive market. Companies like Apple Watch lead the market, all offering an broad array of various models to suit a range of budgets. Based on how high tech the watch you go for, costs can vary between £100 to a small fortune.

"I find it infuriating, I'm unable to relax."

"It reassures me… It feels like a supporter supporting me."

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

A small sample of the responses people have shared from other tracker enthusiasts when I inquire what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My feelings on mine? At this moment, frustrating. It's indicating I'm off pace, leading me to doubt whether the trees I'm running below are interfering with my location tracking.

A vast number of us strap these little devices onto our arms and use them all day and night, seemingly unconcerned with the fact they're constantly tracking us.

Gone are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an idea of our pedometer reading. Today, they can measure our sleep patterns, heart rate, oxygen saturation, our VO2 max.

It's a challenge to find a bodily function they don't track.

But are they able to do what they say they do? And are the data points we obsess over a true reflection of the truth? Do they boost our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the multitude of measurements and motivational messages just increase our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

"I do get a quite preoccupied with mine," one user admits.

While she loves how her device records her exercise, she finds some of its other functions "overwhelming" at times - a feeling initially realised during a pregnancy.

Prior to discovering she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was not being energetic enough. Later on, the watch keeps telling her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I am caring for a infant, I don't need to be told I'm tired," she says. "I know that perfectly well."

Is it not possible to just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, I suppose, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I value it for its exercise data, I sometimes question whether the myriad other functions it can now do is maybe overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

Different brands of smartwatch has its own novel way of tracking your bodily functions and interpreting your data, but the most use sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They usually emit minute LED lights onto your skin which can monitor blood flow, recording your pulse rate. More advanced devices detect changes in the electrical current that passes over the skin to get an idea of your recovery state.

Expert Perspectives

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the ever-evolving tech could potentially aid early diagnosis, "detecting disease before we show symptoms", it could also turn us the tracked into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can perform tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is abnormal electrical activity in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not automatically signal someone is on the verge of a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more vulnerable of a blood clot in the future.

But how to interpret these numbers is complicated. The expert concerns that as more functions are added, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that having the capacity to monitor so much data is such a positive development," he says.

A professor specialising in patient behaviour agrees. Her work into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of individuals with health issues suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced greater stress and were "more inclined to use healthcare resources".

She identified a vicious circle with her patients - they saw a worrying figure on their watch. They felt anxious. Their pulse rose. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their reading increased again.

"Upon viewing data about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We look, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."