Could I Be Dependent on My Fitness Tracker?

An atmosphere of nervous excitement. Visible is the cold breath coming from my competitors as they execute the "about to run" wiggle on the starting line.

A quick movement of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local Saturday morning race and I'm focused. Three, two, one...

Oh, hang on. I must sort my device. The same goes for the guy alongside me.

The person waiting sighs. I'm not moving until… yes! GPS ready, and I'm running.

During the scramble, it's challenging to spot a arm without a smartwatch on it. And this extends beyond us athletes who use them.

This is a booming, massive sector. Names like Garmin are prevalent, all offering an extensive range of various devices to suit a variety of lifestyles. According to how advanced the device you choose, price tags can start from an affordable sum to a small fortune.

"I find it infuriating, I'm unable to switch off."

"It reassures me… It acts as a friend encouraging me."

"Stop telling me about a restless night."

A small sample of the comments I've had from other smartwatch wearers when I question what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My feelings on mine? Currently, irritating. It's indicating I'm not hitting my target, leading me to doubt whether the overhead branches I'm running below are disrupting my location tracking.

Countless individuals of us attach these little gadgets onto our wrists and wear them 24/7, seemingly unconcerned with the fact they're continuously monitoring us.

A distant memory are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an idea of our daily steps. Currently, they can track our nightly rest, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our body battery.

It's difficult to find a health indicator they don't track.

But can they do what they say they do? And are the statistics we analyse a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they improve our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of measurements and constant notifications just add to our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

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

While she values how her device monitors her exercise, she finds some of its other capabilities "daunting" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a significant period.

Before she realised she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was failing to be productive enough. Now, the watch keeps telling her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I am caring for a infant, 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 stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I've got this love-hate relationship with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its fitness insights, but I'm unsure whether the additional features it can now do is maybe overkill for me."

Inside the Device

Every device of smartwatch has its own novel way of measuring your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the vast bulk use sensors on the back of the watch.

They typically project tiny, coloured LED lights onto your arm which can observe blood flow, recording your heartbeat. Higher-end devices measure changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to gauge your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the continuously improving tech could realistically save lives, "identifying issues before we feel unwell", it could also turn us the tracked into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can conduct tests like heart rhythm analysis, which continuously monitor how normal the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is abnormal signals in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is about to have a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more at risk of a heart problem in the long term.

But how to make sense of these figures is complicated. The expert worries that as additional features are added, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data.

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

A health researcher studying cardiology concurs. Her work into the influence of wearable tech on a specific group of heart condition patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "more inclined to use doctor's time".

She identified a vicious circle with her patients - they spotted a alarming metric on their watch. They grew concerned. Their heart rate increased. They got increasingly anxious. They looked a second time, and their reading increased again.

"When people are presented with numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We check, we check again - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."