Could I Be Hooked on This Wearable Device?

There's a building tension. Apparent is the cold breath coming from my competitors as they do the "pre-race" shuffle on the start line.

A swift twitch of the hips.

I'm at my local weekly parkrun event and I'm focused. It's almost time...

Hold on. I have to adjust my watch. As does the guy beside me.

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

Amidst the crowd, it's challenging to find a arm without a smartwatch on it. And this extends beyond us runners who use them.

We're witnessing a thriving, multi-billion pound sector. Companies like Apple Watch dominate, featuring an broad array of various devices to cater to a range of lifestyles. Based on how advanced the device you go for, prices can range from an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

"It drives me insane, it's impossible to stop checking."

"It comforts me… It acts as a companion supporting me."

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

A handful of the responses I've received from other device users when I ask what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on mine? Right now, frustrating. It's indicating I'm off pace, causing me to question whether the foliage I'm passing under are blocking my location tracking.

Countless individuals of us strap these little monitors onto our arms and keep them on constantly, ostensibly at ease with the fact they're perpetually monitoring us.

A distant memory are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an idea of our daily steps. Today, they can analyse our nightly rest, heart rate, glucose levels, our VO2 max.

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

But are they able to do what they advertise? And are the numbers we analyse a faithful picture of our actual health? Do they enhance our overall health, or do the avalanche of readings and motivational messages just contribute to our sense of overwhelm?

Addiction or Aid?

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

While she values how her device tracks her exercise, she finds some of its other functions "excessive" at times - a feeling initially realised during a major life event.

Before she realised she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. Later on, the watch frequently reports her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I am caring for a infant, I don't need to be informed my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that perfectly well."

Is it not possible to just remove it?

"I could, theoretically, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, I just wonder whether the myriad other functions it can now do is possibly excessive for me."

Inside the Device

Every device of smartwatch has its own unique way of measuring your bodily functions and processing your data, but the majority use detectors on the underside of the watch.

They typically shine tiny, coloured LED lights onto your arm which can observe capillary action, recording your heartbeat. Sophisticated devices detect changes in the bioimpedance that flows through the skin to gauge your recovery state.

Expert Perspectives

A data scientist says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the continuously improving tech could actually save lives, "identifying issues before we show symptoms", 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 constantly monitor how stable the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is irregular electrical activity in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

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

But how to understand these numbers is complicated. The expert concerns that as further capabilities are added, people may not be able to fully comprehend their data.

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

A clinical psychologist focusing on wearable tech agrees. Her work into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of cardiovascular patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced increased anxiety and were "far more likely to use medical services".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They became worried. Their pulse went up. They got more worried. They re-examined the data, and their heart rate increased again.

"If we see stats about ourselves that we lack context for then, of course, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we re-check - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."