Am I Hooked on My Fitness Tracker?

There's a feeling of anticipation. I can see the chilled vapour emanating from my fellow runners as they execute the "about to run" jiggle on the starting line.

A quick twitch of the hips.

I'm at my local 5km community parkrun and I'm serious. It's almost time...

Oh, hang on. I have to sort my watch. So does the runner alongside me.

The person in the line expresses impatience. I'm not moving until… done! GPS ready, away I go.

During the scramble, it's difficult to see a arm without a wearable on it. And this extends beyond us runners who rely on them.

It's a booming, massive sector. Brands like Garmin dominate, all offering an broad array of different versions to cater to a spectrum of lifestyles. According to how feature-packed the watch you select, prices can range from a hundred pounds to thousands of pounds.

"It drives me insane, it's impossible to stop checking."

"It reassures me… It's like a friend encouraging me."

"Stop telling me I've experienced a bad night's sleep."

A handful of the comments I've received from fellow tracker enthusiasts when I question what they think of theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My thoughts on my own device? Right now, frustrating. It's telling me I'm not hitting my target, causing me to question whether the overhead branches I'm running below are disrupting my GPS connection.

Millions of us attach these small devices onto our wrists and wear them constantly, seemingly comfortable with the fact they're constantly tracking us.

Long past are the days when we relied on them solely to give us an idea of our step count. Now, they can measure our nightly rest, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, our VO2 max.

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

But are they able to do what they advertise? And are the statistics we analyse a true reflection of the truth? Do they enhance our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the avalanche of metrics and motivational messages just add to our sense of overwhelm?

Addiction or Aid?

"I become a a little fixated with mine," an individual admits.

While she loves how her device tracks her workouts, she finds some of its other features "overwhelming" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a significant period.

Until she found out she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch kept telling her she was being insufficiently active enough. In a new phase, the watch keeps telling her she's had a restless night.

"I've got a young baby, I don't need to be told my sleep was poor," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly."

Couldn't she just remove it?

"It's possible, theoretically, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she continues. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is maybe excessive for me."

How Do They Work?

Different brands of smartwatch has its own novel way of measuring your health metrics and interpreting your data, but the majority use detectors on the underside of the watch.

They typically emit minute LED lights onto your skin which can detect blood flow, recording your BPM. Higher-end devices analyse changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to gauge your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the continuously improving tech could actually save lives, "spotting abnormalities before we notice anything", it could also turn us device users into the "worried well".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can conduct tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which constantly monitor how normal the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is abnormal electrical activity in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an advance notice they might be more vulnerable of a heart problem in the future.

But how to make sense of these figures is complex. The expert worries that as more functions are added, people may not be able to fully contextualise their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that the ability to monitor so many metrics is such a positive development," he says.

A health researcher focusing on patient behaviour echoes this sentiment. A study into the impact of wearable tech on a set of individuals with health issues suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced greater stress and were "far more likely to use healthcare resources".

She noted a vicious circle with her patients - they spotted a concerning reading on their watch. They felt anxious. Their heart rate rose. They got more worried. They looked a second time, and their heart rate went up again.

"If we see data about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, naturally, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We look, we check again - it becomes a vicious cycle."