Is It Possible I'm Hooked on This Smartwatch?

A sense of nervous excitement. Apparent is the cold breath exhaled by my fellow runners as they perform the "pre-race" jiggle on the start line.

A quick flick of the hips.

I'm participating in my local Saturday morning race and I'm focused. Three, two, one...

Oh, hang on. I need to sort my watch. As does the person alongside me.

The person in the line tuts. I'm not moving until… yes! GPS ready, away I go.

Amidst the crowd, it's difficult to find a wrist without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us runners who rely on them.

We're witnessing a explosive, massive sector. Companies like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, all offering an wide selection of various models to fit a range of budgets. Depending on how advanced the model you go for, costs can range from an affordable sum to a significant investment.

"It makes me crazy, I can't relax."

"It reassures me… It feels like a supporter guiding me."

"Please don't notify me I've experienced a poor sleep."

Just some of the comments I've had from like-minded smartwatch wearers when I ask what they feel about theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My thoughts on mine? Right now, annoying. It's telling me I'm not hitting my target, making me wonder whether the trees I'm running below are disrupting my GPS connection.

A vast number of us strap these compact devices onto our wrists and use them all day and night, apparently unconcerned with the fact they're constantly tracking us.

Gone are the days when we relied on them only to give us an estimation of our step count. Currently, they can track our sleep patterns, blood pressure, glucose levels, our recovery score.

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

But can they do what they say they do? And are the numbers we obsess over a accurate representation of reality? Do they improve our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of readings and motivational messages just increase our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

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

While she loves how her device tracks her workouts, she finds some of its other capabilities "overwhelming" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a major life event.

Until she found out she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was failing to be active enough. Later on, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a young baby, I don't need to be informed I'm tired," she says. "That fact is all too clearly."

Why doesn't she just take it off?

"I could, theoretically, but I have this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I value it for its fitness insights, but I'm unsure whether the additional features it can now do is maybe too much for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Different brands of smartwatch has its own unique way of measuring your health metrics and processing your data, but the majority use optical sensors on the underside of the watch.

They usually project small, green LED lights onto your skin which can detect capillary action, recording your BPM. More advanced devices measure changes in the bioimpedance that runs through the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

A data scientist says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the rapidly advancing tech could realistically save lives, "detecting disease before we show symptoms", it could also turn us the tracked into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that newer wearables can perform tests like medical-grade monitoring, which continuously monitor how stable the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is erratic electrical activity in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more vulnerable of a stroke in the long term.

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

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

A health researcher studying wearable tech concurs. Research into the effect of wearable tech on a cohort of individuals with health issues suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced greater stress and were "more inclined to use medical services".

She identified a pattern with her patients - they spotted a alarming metric on their watch. They became worried. Their BPM rose. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety increased again.

"If we see 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."