Is It Possible I'm Dependent on This Smartwatch?

There's a building tension. I can see the cold breath coming from my rivals as they do the "about to run" shuffle on the starting line.

A swift twitch of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local 5km community parkrun and I'm focused. It's almost time...

Oh, hang on. I need to adjust my tracker. As does the guy alongside me.

The person behind us expresses impatience. I won't start until… yes! GPS ready, and I'm running.

Amidst the crowd, it's hard to spot a person without a wearable on it. And it's not just us athletes who wear them.

We're witnessing a booming, multi-billion pound market. Companies like Samsung Galaxy dominate, all offering an broad array of diverse devices to fit a spectrum of needs. Based on how feature-packed the device you go for, prices can vary between £100 to a small fortune.

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

"It reassures me… It acts as a companion guiding me."

"I wish it wouldn't say I've had a restless night."

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

The Monitoring Conundrum

My thoughts on my own device? Right now, annoying. It's reporting I'm not hitting my target, leading me to doubt whether the trees along my route are blocking my GPS connection.

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

Long past are the days when we used them only to give us an estimation of our daily steps. Today, they can track our nightly rest, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, our body battery.

It's difficult to find a physical metric they aren't designed to measure.

But are they able to do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we analyse a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the multitude of readings and cheerleading alerts just add to our sense of overwhelm?

Addiction or Aid?

"I become a quite fixated with mine," a wearer admits.

While she values how her device monitors her workouts, she finds some of its other features "overwhelming" at times - a feeling initially realised during a pregnancy.

Until she found out she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently productive enough. Later on, the watch frequently reports her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I've got a young baby, it's unnecessary for me to be told I've not slept," she says. "I know that all too clearly."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"It's possible, I suppose, but I'm in this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I love it for its fitness insights, I just wonder whether all the other things it can now do is maybe too much for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Each model of smartwatch has its own unique way of monitoring your health metrics and interpreting your data, but the vast bulk use optical sensors on the back of the watch.

They usually emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your skin which can detect pulsation, recording your heartbeat. Higher-end devices detect changes in the electrical current that runs through the skin to assess your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

A professor says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the continuously improving tech could actually aid early diagnosis, "identifying issues before we feel unwell", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "worried well".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can carry out tests like heart rhythm analysis, which constantly monitor how stable the heart is. They can flag 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 imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more susceptible of a stroke in the future.

But how to understand these readings is not straightforward. The expert worries that as additional features are introduced, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

"I remain sceptical that being able to monitor so many things is such a positive development," he says.

A health researcher focusing on patient behaviour concurs. Her work into the influence of wearable tech on a specific group of heart condition patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced greater stress and were "more inclined to use healthcare resources".

She identified a vicious circle with her patients - they noticed a alarming metric on their watch. They grew concerned. Their heart rate increased. They got even more concerned. They looked a second time, and their anxiety increased again.

"If we see numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, understandably, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We look, we check again - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."