Is It Possible I'm Addicted to This Wearable Device?

An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. I can see the chilled vapour coming from my competitors as they execute the "pre-race" shuffle on the start line.

A quick movement of the hips.

I'm participating in my local weekly parkrun event and I'm serious. Three, two, one...

Hold on. I need to sort my watch. As does the person alongside me.

The person in the line expresses impatience. I'm not moving until… done! Connection established, away I go.

Amidst the crowd, it's hard to see a arm without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us runners who rely on them.

This is a booming, massive industry. Names like Samsung Galaxy dominate, featuring an extensive range of different devices to suit a spectrum of budgets. According to how feature-packed the watch you select, costs can vary between £100 to a small fortune.

"I find it infuriating, it's impossible to switch off."

"It reassures me… It's like a friend guiding me."

"Please don't notify me I've had a restless night."

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

The Data Dilemma

My thoughts on my own device? Currently, annoying. It's reporting I'm off pace, making me wonder whether the trees I'm passing under are disrupting my location tracking.

Millions of us fasten these small monitors onto our wrists and use them all day and night, ostensibly unconcerned with the fact they're continuously recording us.

A distant memory are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an rough count of our step count. Now, they can track our sleep patterns, stress levels, glucose levels, our recovery score.

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

But are they able to do what they advertise? And are the statistics we analyse a true reflection of reality? Do they boost our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the multitude of metrics and motivational messages just contribute to our daily stresses?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I do get a quite obsessed with mine," a wearer reveals.

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

Until she found out she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was failing to be active enough. Now, the watch keeps telling her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a infant, it's unnecessary for me to be notified I've not slept," she says. "I know that all too clearly."

Is it not possible to just remove it?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I'm in this push-pull dynamic with it," she explains. "I love it for its exercise data, but I'm unsure whether the additional features it can now do is possibly overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

Different brands of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of measuring your vitals and analysing your data, but the most use optical sensors on the back of the watch.

They typically project minute LED lights onto your skin which can monitor capillary action, recording your heartbeat. Sophisticated devices measure changes in the bioimpedance that passes over the skin to assess your recovery state.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the ever-evolving tech could actually aid early diagnosis, "identifying issues before we show symptoms", it could also turn us device users into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can carry out tests like heart rhythm analysis, which regularly monitor how stable the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic electrical activity in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is imminently going to suffer a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more susceptible of a blood clot in the years to come.

But how to understand these figures is complex. The expert worries that as further capabilities are incorporated, people may not be able to fully understand their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that being able to monitor so many things is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A health researcher studying patient behaviour agrees. Her work into the effect 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 heightened worry and were "had a higher tendency to use medical services".

She noted a cycle with her patients - they saw a concerning reading on their watch. They grew concerned. Their heart rate increased. They got even more concerned. They looked a second time, and their reading increased again.

"When people are presented with stats about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, naturally, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We look, we check again - it becomes a feedback loop."