🔗 Share this article Am I Dependent on My Fitness Tracker? Many runners end up monitoring their trackers numerous times throughout a competition. A sense of feeling of anticipation. Visible is the chilled vapour emanating from my fellow runners as they execute the "starting line" wiggle on the beginning point. A quick movement of the hips. I'm participating in my local 5km community parkrun and I mean business. The countdown begins... Hold on. I have to adjust my device. The same goes for the guy beside me. The person in the line tuts. I won't start until… done! Connection established, I'm off. During the scramble, it's difficult to see a wrist without a wearable on it. And this isn't only us runners who wear them. It's a booming, multi-billion pound industry. Companies like Garmin lead the market, all offering an extensive range of diverse versions to suit a range of needs. According to how feature-packed the model you go for, price tags can range from a hundred pounds to a small fortune. "It drives me insane, I'm unable to switch off." "It reassures me… It feels like a supporter encouraging me." "I wish it wouldn't say I've had a bad night's sleep." A handful of the comments people have shared from fellow device users when I question what they their opinion is on theirs. Individuals are left wondering whether the information on their watch is reliable. The Monitoring Conundrum My thoughts on mine? At this moment, annoying. It's telling me I'm off pace, leading me to doubt whether the trees along my route are interfering with my satellite signal. Millions of us attach these compact gadgets onto our arms and use them 24/7, ostensibly unconcerned with the fact they're constantly monitoring us. A distant memory are the days when we used them only to give us an idea of our pedometer reading. Today, they can analyse our nightly rest, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our VO2 max. It's a challenge to find a physical metric they fail to monitor. But can they do what they advertise? And are the numbers we analyse a accurate representation of reality? Do they boost our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the plethora of measurements and constant notifications just contribute to our sense of overwhelm? Some users find the abundance of functions on their smartwatches to be "excessive" at times. A Complicated Bond "I do get a quite preoccupied with mine," a wearer reveals. While she values how her device monitors her workouts, she finds some of its other functions "overwhelming" at times - a feeling first discovered during a pregnancy. Until she found out she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was being insufficiently productive enough. Later on, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep. "I have a infant, it's unnecessary for me to be told my sleep was poor," she says. "That fact is only too well." Is it not possible to just stop wearing it? "I could, perhaps, but I have this complicated dynamic with it," she continues. "I love it for its fitness insights, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is perhaps excessive for me." The Technology Behind the Tracking Every device of smartwatch has its own unique way of tracking your health metrics and processing your data, but the most use sensors on the reverse of the watch. They usually emit small, green LED lights onto your arm which can detect capillary action, identifying your heartbeat. Higher-end devices measure changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to gauge your nervous system activity. The Professional Viewpoint A professor says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the rapidly advancing tech could actually prevent illness, "identifying issues before we notice anything", it could also turn us the tracked into the "anxious healthy". He points out that the most advanced wearables can carry out tests like medical-grade monitoring, which continuously 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 irregular heartbeat. This does not automatically signal someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more susceptible of a stroke in the long term. But how to interpret these figures is complicated. The expert worries that as more functions are incorporated, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data. "I'm not entirely convinced that being able to monitor so many metrics is such a beneficial thing," he says. A health researcher specialising in wearable tech echoes this sentiment. A study into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of cardiovascular patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced heightened worry and were "far more likely to use medical services". She observed a pattern with her patients - they saw a concerning reading on their watch. They felt anxious. Their heart rate went up. They got even more concerned. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety increased again. "Upon viewing data about ourselves that we lack context for then, understandably, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We check, we re-check - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."