🔗 Share this article Could I Be Addicted to This Fitness Tracker? Numerous athletes end up monitoring their trackers countless times throughout a race. There's a feeling of anticipation. I can see the cold breath emanating from my rivals as they perform the "about to run" shuffle on the starting line. A rapid flick of the hips. I'm participating in my local Saturday morning race and I'm serious. The countdown begins... Wait a second. I must adjust my watch. The same goes for the runner beside me. The person behind us expresses impatience. I refuse to go until… there! Signal acquired, I'm off. Amidst the crowd, it's difficult to see a arm without a wearable on it. And this isn't only us athletes who wear them. It's a thriving, multi-billion pound industry. Names like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, featuring an wide selection of different devices to cater to a range of needs. Depending on how high tech the model you go for, price tags can range from £100 to a significant investment. "It makes me crazy, I can't switch off." "It comforts me… It's like a supporter guiding me." "I wish it wouldn't say about a poor sleep." A handful of the responses I've received from other tracker enthusiasts when I ask what they think of theirs. Many users are often curious whether the metrics their device provides is reliable. The Monitoring Conundrum My feelings on my own device? Right now, frustrating. It's indicating I'm not hitting my target, causing me to question whether the foliage I'm running below are blocking my GPS connection. A vast number of us fasten these compact gadgets onto our arms and use them constantly, seemingly at ease with the fact they're perpetually monitoring us. A distant memory are the days when we depended on them only to give us an estimation of our step count. Today, they can track our sleep patterns, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our body battery. 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 data points we analyse a true reflection of reality? Do they enhance our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the multitude of readings and cheerleading alerts just add to our everyday anxiety? Some users find the sheer number of functions on their smartwatches to be "too much" at times. A Love-Hate Relationship "I do get a a little fixated with mine," one user confesses. While she loves how her device records her exercise, she finds some of its other capabilities "overwhelming" at times - a feeling first discovered during a significant period. Prior to discovering she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was being insufficiently productive enough. Now, the watch keeps telling her she's had a bad night's sleep. "I have a infant, it's unnecessary for me to be informed I've not slept," she says. "That fact is perfectly well." Is it not possible to just remove it? "It's possible, theoretically, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she explains. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, I sometimes question whether the myriad other functions it can now do is maybe excessive for me." The Technology Behind the Tracking Each model of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of tracking your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the most use detectors on the reverse of the watch. They commonly project tiny, coloured LED lights onto your arm which can monitor pulsation, recording your BPM. More advanced devices detect changes in the skin conductance that runs through the skin to get an idea of your stress levels. A Fine Balance A professor says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the ever-evolving tech could potentially save lives, "identifying issues before we feel unwell", it could also turn us device users into the "concerned but fine". He points out that the most advanced wearables can perform tests like heart rhythm analysis, which continuously monitor how normal the heart is. They can alert 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 heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more susceptible of a blood clot in the long term. But how to understand these readings is complicated. The expert worries that as more functions are introduced, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data. "I'm not entirely convinced that having the capacity to monitor so much data is such a beneficial thing," he says. A professor studying wearable tech concurs. Her work into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of cardiovascular patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced increased anxiety and were "more inclined to use medical services". She identified a pattern with her patients - they noticed a alarming metric on their watch. They grew concerned. Their pulse went up. They got increasingly anxious. They looked a second time, and their reading went up again. "If we see numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, of course, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."