Could I Be Hooked on My Wearable Device?
A sense of feeling of anticipation. I can see the frosty air coming from my competitors as they execute the "pre-race" shuffle on the starting line.
A swift twitch of the hips.
I'm at my local Saturday morning race and I'm focused. Three, two, one...
Oh, hang on. I have to start my watch. As does the person alongside me.
The person in the line tuts. I'm not moving until… yes! GPS ready, I'm off.
In the mele, it's challenging to find a person without a fitness tracker on it. And this extends beyond us athletes who wear them.
It's a explosive, multi-billion dollar industry. Companies like Garmin are prevalent, featuring an broad selection of various models to fit a range of lifestyles. Based on how advanced the model you select, price tags can start from an affordable sum to a small fortune.
"It makes me crazy, I can't switch off."
"It comforts me… It acts as a companion encouraging me."
"Stop telling me I've experienced a restless night."
Just some of the responses people have shared from other smartwatch wearers when I inquire what they feel about theirs.
The Data Dilemma
My feelings on my own device? At this moment, annoying. It's reporting I'm not hitting my target, making me wonder whether the overhead branches along my route are disrupting my location tracking.
Countless individuals of us strap these small monitors onto our arms and wear them 24/7, 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 idea of our daily steps. Now, they can track our sleep quality, blood pressure, glucose levels, our VO2 max.
It's tricky to find a physical metric they don't track.
But are they able to do what they claim to do? And are the statistics we analyse a true reflection of our actual health? Do they improve our daily wellness, or do the multitude of measurements and constant notifications just contribute to our everyday anxiety?
A Love-Hate Relationship
"I find myself getting a quite preoccupied with mine," a wearer confesses.
While she appreciates how her device monitors her runs, she finds some of its other capabilities "overwhelming" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a significant period.
Prior to discovering she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being energetic enough. Now, the watch insists her she's had a restless night.
"I have a infant, it's unnecessary for me to be notified I've not slept," she says. "I know that only too well."
Why doesn't she just take it off?
"I could, theoretically, but I have this complicated dynamic with it," she explains. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, but I'm unsure whether the myriad other functions it can now do is maybe overkill for me."
Inside the Device
Different brands of smartwatch has its own novel way of tracking your bodily functions and processing your data, but the majority use sensors on the underside of the watch.
They commonly emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can observe pulsation, recording your BPM. Higher-end devices detect changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to assess your nervous system activity.
Expert Perspectives
A professor says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could realistically save lives, "identifying issues before we show symptoms", it could also turn us device users into the "anxious healthy".
He points out that some of the latest wearables can carry out tests like medical-grade monitoring, which continuously monitor how normal the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is irregular impulses in the heart causing an arrhythmia.
This does not mean someone is on the verge of a heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more vulnerable of a heart problem in the years to come.
But how to understand these figures is not straightforward. The expert concerns that as further capabilities are introduced, people may not be able to fully comprehend their data.
"I remain sceptical that the ability to monitor so many metrics is such a beneficial thing," he says.
A professor focusing on wearable tech echoes this sentiment. Her work into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of individuals with health issues suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced increased anxiety and were "more inclined to use healthcare resources".
She noted a pattern with her patients - they spotted a alarming metric on their watch. They felt anxious. Their pulse went up. They got even more concerned. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety went up again.
"When people are presented with data about ourselves that we don't really understand then, of course, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We check, we re-check - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."
