🔗 Share this article

There's a nervous excitement. Apparent is the chilled vapour exhaled by my competitors as they execute the "about to run" wiggle on the starting line.

A rapid twitch of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local 5km community parkrun and I mean business. Three, two, one...

Hold on. I need to start my watch. So does the person next to me.

The person behind us expresses impatience. I'm not moving until… there! Signal acquired, I'm off.

In the mele, it's challenging to find a wrist without a smartwatch on it. And this extends beyond us runners who rely on them.

This is a thriving, multi-billion pound industry. Names like Samsung Galaxy are prevalent, all offering an wide range of different models to fit a range of lifestyles. Based on how feature-packed the model you go for, costs can vary between an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

"I find it infuriating, I can't relax."

"It reassures me… It's like a supporter encouraging me."

"Please don't notify me I've experienced a bad night's sleep."

A handful of the comments people have shared from other device users when I ask what they their opinion is on theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My current opinion on mine? Currently, annoying. It's indicating I'm off pace, leading me to doubt whether the trees along my route are interfering with my location tracking.

Millions of us strap these small gadgets onto our arms and keep them on 24/7, apparently at ease with the fact they're constantly recording us.

A distant memory are the days when we used them only to give us an rough count of our pedometer reading. Currently, they can measure our sleep patterns, blood pressure, glucose levels, our VO2 max.

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

But are they able to do what they say they do? And are the statistics we analyse a faithful picture of the truth? Do they enhance our overall health, or do the avalanche of measurements and cheerleading alerts just increase our everyday anxiety?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I do get a a little fixated with mine," one user reveals.

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

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being energetic enough. Now, the watch keeps telling her she's had a restless night.

"I am caring for a young baby, there's no point to be told I'm tired," she says. "That fact is all too clearly."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"I could, I suppose, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she continues. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, but I'm unsure whether the additional features it can now do is maybe excessive for me."

Inside the Device

Each model of smartwatch has its own unique way of measuring your health metrics and interpreting your data, but the majority use detectors on the reverse of the watch.

They commonly emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can detect capillary action, recording your BPM. Sophisticated devices measure changes in the skin conductance that runs through the skin to assess your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could actually aid early diagnosis, "detecting disease before we feel unwell", it could also turn us the tracked into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can perform tests like heart rhythm analysis, which regularly monitor how stable the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is irregular electrical activity in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not automatically signal someone is about to have a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more at risk of a blood clot in the future.

But how to make sense of these figures is complex. The expert worries that as additional features are incorporated, people may not be able to fully understand their data.

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

A clinical psychologist studying cardiology concurs. Research into the influence of wearable tech on a set of individuals with health issues suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced heightened worry and were "had a higher tendency to use healthcare resources".

She noted a vicious circle with her patients - they saw a worrying figure on their watch. They became worried. Their BPM rose. They got increasingly anxious. They checked again, and their heart rate went up again.

"When people are presented with stats about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, naturally, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We look, we re-check - it becomes a vicious cycle."