Is It Possible I'm Hooked on My Fitness Tracker?

An atmosphere of nervous excitement. Apparent is the cold breath exhaled by my rivals as they perform the "starting line" jiggle on the beginning point.

A rapid flick of the hips.

I'm participating in my local weekly parkrun event and I mean business. It's almost time...

Hold on. I have to adjust my device. So does the person beside me.

The person waiting expresses impatience. I won't start until… done! Connection established, I'm off.

During the scramble, it's challenging to find a arm without a fitness tracker on it. And this extends beyond us athletes who rely on them.

It's a explosive, multi-billion pound industry. Companies like Garmin dominate, each with an broad range of various devices to suit a variety of budgets. According to how high tech the model you select, costs can start from a hundred pounds to a small fortune.

"It makes me crazy, it's impossible to switch off."

"It comforts me… It's like a companion guiding me."

"I wish it wouldn't say about a restless night."

A handful of the responses I've received from like-minded device users when I question what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My current opinion on my own device? Currently, irritating. It's telling me my speed is wrong, causing me to question whether the trees I'm passing under are disrupting my location tracking.

Countless individuals of us strap these small gadgets onto our arms and keep them on constantly, apparently comfortable with the fact they're continuously tracking us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an estimation of our step count. Currently, they can measure our sleep quality, blood pressure, heart rate variability (HRV), our body battery.

It's a challenge to find a health indicator they aren't designed to measure.

But do they do what they advertise? And are the data points we analyse a true reflection of our actual health? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of measurements and cheerleading alerts just increase our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I do get a bit preoccupied with mine," a wearer admits.

While she values how her device monitors her workouts, she finds some of its other capabilities "overwhelming" at times - a feeling initially realised during a major life event.

Prior to discovering she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being active enough. Now, the watch insists her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I've got a infant, I don't need to be informed my sleep was poor," she says. "That fact is only too well."

Is it not possible to just stop wearing it?

"I could, theoretically, but I'm in this complicated dynamic with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its fitness insights, I sometimes question whether the additional features it can now do is possibly too much for me."

Inside the Device

Each model of smartwatch has its own unique way of measuring your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the most use sensors on the back of the watch.

They typically shine small, green LED lights onto your skin which can monitor pulsation, detecting your BPM. Higher-end devices measure changes in the electrical current that runs through the skin to get an idea of your stress levels.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the ever-evolving tech could realistically prevent illness, "identifying issues before we show symptoms", it could also turn us the tracked into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can carry out tests like heart rhythm analysis, which regularly monitor how normal the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is irregular signals in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is imminently going to suffer a heart attack, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more at risk of a stroke in the long term.

But how to understand these numbers is complicated. The expert fears that as additional features are introduced, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that the ability 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 specific group of cardiovascular patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced increased anxiety and were "more inclined to use medical services".

She noted a pattern with her patients - they noticed a concerning reading on their watch. They felt anxious. Their BPM increased. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their heart rate rose further.

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