Is It Possible I'm Addicted to This Smartwatch?

There's a nervous excitement. I can see the chilled vapour coming from my rivals as they perform the "about to run" wiggle on the starting line.

A swift movement of the hips.

I'm at my local 5km community parkrun and I'm focused. Three, two, one...

Hold on. I have to start my watch. So does the guy beside me.

The person behind us expresses impatience. I won't start until… done! Signal acquired, away I go.

During the scramble, it's difficult to find a arm without a fitness tracker on it. And this extends beyond us participants who wear them.

We're witnessing a booming, multi-billion pound market. Companies like Samsung Galaxy are prevalent, all offering an wide selection of various versions to suit a range of needs. Based on how advanced the watch you choose, costs can start from an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

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

"It provides solace… It acts as a companion supporting me."

"Stop telling me about a restless night."

Just some of the responses I've had from other device users when I inquire what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My thoughts on mine? Right now, irritating. It's telling me I'm not hitting my target, leading me to doubt whether the foliage I'm passing under are interfering with my location tracking.

Millions of us strap these small devices onto our wrists and wear them constantly, seemingly unconcerned with the fact they're constantly recording us.

Gone are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an estimation of our pedometer reading. Currently, they can measure our sleep patterns, blood pressure, heart rate variability (HRV), our body battery.

It's tricky to find a bodily function they fail to monitor.

But are they able to do what they advertise? And are the numbers we scrutinise a true reflection of reality? Do they boost our daily wellness, or do the plethora of metrics and constant notifications just increase our daily stresses?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I find myself getting a a little fixated with mine," an individual reveals.

While she values how her device monitors her exercise, she finds some of its other features "overwhelming" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a pregnancy.

Prior to discovering she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch kept telling her she was failing to be active enough. Later on, the watch insists her she's had a restless night.

"I have a six-month old, I don't need to be told my sleep was poor," she says. "I'm acutely aware only too well."

Is it not possible to just remove it?

"I suppose I could, I suppose, but I have this love-hate relationship with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, but I'm unsure whether all the other things it can now do is possibly excessive for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Every device of smartwatch has its own unique way of monitoring your health metrics and processing your data, but the majority use detectors on the reverse of the watch.

They typically shine minute LED lights onto your arm which can detect pulsation, identifying your pulse rate. More advanced devices detect changes in the bioimpedance that runs through the skin to gauge your recovery state.

Expert Perspectives

A professor says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the continuously improving tech could actually save lives, "detecting disease before we notice anything", it could also turn us device users into the "worried well".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can conduct tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which continuously monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is irregular electrical activity in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is on the verge of a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more susceptible of a blood clot in the long term.

But how to make sense of these numbers is complex. The expert concerns that as further capabilities are added, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

"I have some doubts that being able to monitor so many things is such a good idea," he says.

A clinical psychologist focusing on patient behaviour agrees. Research into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of heart condition patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced increased anxiety and were "more inclined to use medical services".

She observed a vicious circle with her patients - they spotted a alarming metric on their watch. They grew concerned. Their BPM rose. They got even more concerned. They re-examined the data, and their reading went up again.

"When people are presented with stats about ourselves that we lack context for then, understandably, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a feedback loop."