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An atmosphere of nervous excitement. I can see the chilled vapour coming from my fellow runners as they execute the "pre-race" wiggle on the starting line.

A quick twitch of the hips.

I'm at my local weekly parkrun event and I'm focused. The countdown begins...

Oh, hang on. I need to adjust my device. As does the person next to me.

The person behind us sighs. I'm not moving until… there! GPS ready, and I'm running.

Amidst the crowd, it's challenging to find a wrist without a smartwatch on it. And this isn't only us athletes who rely on them.

We're witnessing a booming, multi-billion dollar sector. Companies like Samsung Galaxy dominate, featuring an broad array of various devices to cater to a variety of needs. Depending on how advanced the model you choose, price tags can range from £100 to a small fortune.

"I find it infuriating, I can't switch off."

"It reassures me… It feels like a supporter encouraging me."

"I wish it wouldn't say I've had a bad night's sleep."

A small sample of the responses people have shared from other device users when I inquire what they feel about theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My feelings on my own device? At this moment, frustrating. It's indicating my speed is wrong, making me wonder whether the foliage I'm passing under are blocking my GPS connection.

Countless individuals of us fasten these small devices onto our wrists and use them all day and night, apparently comfortable with the fact they're perpetually tracking us.

A distant memory are the days when we relied on them solely to give us an idea of our step count. Now, they can measure our sleep quality, blood pressure, glucose levels, our body battery.

It's a challenge to find a health indicator they fail to monitor.

But can they do what they claim to do? And are the data points we analyse a accurate representation of the truth? Do they boost our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the plethora of metrics and motivational messages just contribute to our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

"I do get a a little obsessed with mine," one user confesses.

While she loves how her device tracks her runs, she finds some of its other features "overwhelming" at times - a feeling initially realised during a pregnancy.

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. Later on, the watch frequently reports her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a young baby, there's no point to be notified my sleep was poor," she says. "I'm acutely aware only too well."

Couldn't she just take it off?

"I could, theoretically, but I've got this complicated dynamic with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, I sometimes question whether the additional features it can now do is perhaps excessive 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 most use sensors on the underside of the watch.

They typically shine tiny, coloured LED lights onto your arm which can monitor blood flow, identifying your BPM. Higher-end devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that flows through the skin to gauge your recovery state.

Expert Perspectives

A professor says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the ever-evolving tech could actually save lives, "identifying issues before we feel unwell", 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 alert if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is irregular impulses in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not mean someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more vulnerable of a stroke in the years to come.

But how to understand these numbers is not straightforward. The expert concerns that as further capabilities are introduced, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that the ability to monitor so much data is such a good idea," he says.

A professor specialising in cardiology echoes this sentiment. A study 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 "far more likely to use doctor's time".

She identified a cycle with her patients - they spotted a worrying figure on their watch. They felt anxious. Their pulse went up. They got more worried. They re-examined the data, and their heart rate went up again.

"If we see stats about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we check again - it becomes a vicious cycle."