Wearable Tech: Do You Really Need A Device to Tell You to Move?

Once upon a time, humans rose with the sun, walked and ran everywhere, ate what they needed, and slept when it got dark. Now? We track our steps, log our calories, and get nudged to take a walk by little vibrating bands on our wrists. Pretty bonkers.

Wearable tech, like the Apple Watch, Oura Ring, and Whoop strap, is booming. Around 455 million people now own a smartwatch - a 41% surge in just two years - and that number’s expected to hit over 1.1 billion globally by next year.

These devices promise to help us live better, recover faster, and tune into what our bodies need. And for many people, they really do. Whether it’s a nudge to get up from your desk or some clarity on why your sleep’s been off, wearable tech can offer genuinely useful feedback - insights we might not otherwise notice.

But there’s a flip side. All that data can start to feel like constant measurement. Or worse, leave us relying on a device (rather than our own bodies) to tell us how we feel. So is all this tracking really helping? Or is it just another screen whispering that we’re doing life wrong?

The Pros of Wearable Tech

1. It makes us more aware (and accountable)

The simple act of tracking steps or sleep can change behaviour. A 2022 JAMA study found that people using fitness trackers increased their daily steps by an average of 1,800. For those of us glued to a desk most of the day, that’s a meaningful nudge in the right direction.

2. It helps us understand what’s really going on

Feeling sluggish but unsure why? Devices like Oura or Whoop break down your sleep stages, heart rate variability, and recovery scores to show how well your body is coping. As well as tracking rest and recovery, it can help spot patterns tied to stress, caffeine, or screens which might be contributing to how you feel.

3. It can flag health concerns early

Wearables have also been used to detect irregular heart rhythms, drops in oxygen levels, and other early warning signs. One Stanford Medicine study found the Apple Watch’s ECG feature could detect atrial fibrillation with 84% accuracy.

4. It’s a gateway to healthier habits

Need a reminder to move? Stretch? Get to bed? Wearables can support healthy routines with gentle nudges. For some, they become a kind of wellness sidekick as they can help you build and maintain healthy habits.

The Cons of Wearable Tech

1. It can be addictive

Wearable tech is gamified which helps you keep to your goals. But it can also become addictive. Not hitting your sleep score? Step goal? Resting heart rate target? It’s easy to spiral. There’ve even a named it: orthosomnia which is a form of insomnia triggered by anxiety around sleep tracking.

2. It disconnects us from our own instincts

The more we rely on a screen to tell us how we slept or how we’re feeling, the less we practice tuning in. Intuition can start to atrophy. You might feel fine, but if your recovery score is low, suddenly you’re second-guessing your own experience. These devices aren’t foolproof either, data might be off depending on skin tone, temperature, and movement. Yet we often treat the data like gospel.

3. It can make us feel guilty for living normally

Skipped a workout because you were tired? Ate a burger after a long day? Your wearable might let you know you’ve “underperformed”, even when you’ve just had… a regular human day. Instead of supporting rest, it can create low-level guilt around not being “optimal.”

4. It doesn’t always adjust to real life

Many wearables are built for consistency, but life isn’t always consistent. A wedding weekend, long-haul flight, or bad night’s sleep with a teething toddler can throw off your data and leave you with an unhelpful score that doesn’t reflect the context. Tech can’t always read the room.

6. It can feel distracting—or even rude

With a smartwatch, messages, calls, and pings are literally strapped to your wrist. Even if your phone is out of sight, the interruptions aren’t. Glancing at your watch mid-conversation might feel harmless to you, but to someone else, it can come off as dismissive or distracted. It's a reminder that even the subtlest tech can pull us away from the present moment.

So… Do We Need This Stuff?

Here’s the paradox: ideally, we wouldn’t need any of it. We wouldn’t need a device to tell us to move more, rest more, or breathe deeper, because we’d be living in a way that naturally gave us those things. But modern life doesn’t make it easy. We work at desks, stare at screens, ignore hunger cues, and doom-scroll before bed. In that context, wearable tech can act like a kind of safety net, reminding us of the basics.

It’s not that wearable tech is bad. It’s that it’s filling a gap that probably shouldn’t exist in the first place. So if a ring, strap, or watch helps you stay connected to yourself in this fast-moving, screen-heavy world - brilliant. But if it becomes your only source of truth, or closing your rings becomes an obsession, it might be time to let them go. Your body still knows best. You just might need a bit of quiet to hear it.