Smartwatches are touted for their physical health benefits, thanks to the various fitness apps and features available. But, what are the implications of smartwatch use on your mental health? While owning a smartwatch seems like the ideal notion of improving your well-being, the negative effects are often overlooked.

Whether you’re thinking about buying a smartwatch or if you already own one, being aware of the potentially harmful effects of owning a wearable device is crucial. Here are six ways that smartwatches can be triggering for your mental health.

1. Smartwatches Focus on Calories

You might be thinking, “Of course, a fitness-focused smartwatch should track calories!” But for many people, focusing on or constantly being reminded to burn calories can be damaging. For those who have a difficult relationship with food or exercise, the Apple Watch can be especially problematic, as you can’t disable calorie expenditure tracking.

In order to close your Apple Watch Activity rings each day, you need to complete three specific types of activity—exercise minutes, standing minutes, and active calorie burning—and there’s no negotiating on this.

Not only can you not disable calorie tracking on the Apple Watch, but its inbuilt Fitness app encourages you to increase your daily calorie expenditure (read: increase exercise) each week that you meet or exceed your “Move” goal. With such a hard focus on calories, smartwatches also have the potential to cause distress in individuals who suffer from or are vulnerable to eating disorders.

2. They Constantly Remind You to Move and Exercise

Smartwatches can promote unrealistic goals

A common feature among all smartwatches and fitness bands is a reminder to stand or move after a period of sitting. Some smartwatches will also remind you to complete your daily goals if you haven’t already.

On paper, these reminder features sound great. But, if you’re in a negative headspace, physically unwell, or struggling with exercise addiction, then persistent reminders to move throughout the day can be detrimental to your mental health.

If left unmonitored, some smartwatches can remind you to move frequently throughout the day. Some will even question whether you’ve done enough exercise, even when you’ve hit your goal for the day. While some smartwatch features can help improve your mental health, persistent reminders to move can easily cause guilt and self-esteem issues, especially if these arbitrary goals are not met.

3. Smartwatches Consistently Distract You and Interrupt Your Day

One of the main distinguishing features between a smartwatch and a fitness band is the breadth of apps, features, and functionality available on each. Where fitness trackers mostly focus on activity tracking above all else, smartwatches can track fitness as well as act as an extension for your mobile phone.

In one sense, owning a smartwatch means you have another device to ping you with constant notifications, which can increase anxiety as well as distract you. As highlighted by a psychiatrist in an article from Wockhardt Hospitals, constant notifications can trigger anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues. Receiving a constant bombardment of information from both your smartphone and smartwatch will disrupt your concentration on other tasks, which can impact your focus levels in the long term.

Waiting on or being interrupted by constant notifications can also disrupt your relationships. Many people won’t hesitate to check their devices as soon as a notification sound rings, often interrupting face-to-face interactions. It’s worth considering the damage these device notifications are doing to your interpersonal relationships.

4. Smartwatch Features Are Overwhelming

Remember to move every hour, burn enough calories, hit all your goals, and get enough sleep… If you’re not meeting the goals your smartwatch keeps reminding you to aim for, you might feel a sense of failure, panic, and low self-esteem.

Other ways your smartwatch can cause overwhelm include:

  • Making you constantly available. Because most smartwatches are constantly connected to the internet (or at least to your smartphone), you’re always reachable. While you may remember to leave your phone in another room, your smartwatch is literally attached to your body and serves as a constant reminder that anyone can reach you at any time.
  • Information overload. As mentioned above, you’re at risk of receiving floods of notifications throughout each day for different features of your smartwatch.
  • Excessive features. Thanks to the popularity of smartwatches, there is no shortage of apps to download and integrate into your device. Having too many apps, however, especially if unused (or are too difficult to use) can cause overwhelm.

Experiencing overwhelm can be dangerous for your well-being and lead to burnout.

5. Smartwatches Can Encourage Obsessive Body-Checking or Over-Exercising

smartwatches can encourage over exercising

There’s a real risk of becoming exercise-obsessed if you use a smartwatch regularly. Due to the encouragement to “increase your fitness goals each week” that many smartwatches feature, you can develop an unhealthy and obsessive relationship with exercise, body image, and diet.

Having constant access to health data on your smartwatch can lead to an obsessive fixation on the numbers you see, rather than tuning in to your body’s needs. As completing goals can give you that dopamine rush, it’s not hard to see how easy it is to become obsessed with meeting or exceeding your fitness goals at the expense of your mental and physical well-being.

6. Smartwatches Present a Risk of Addiction

Due to the gamification nature of goal achievement on smartwatches (receiving badges and attractive animations each time you meet a goal), it’s easy to become addicted to your wearable device. It can be a toxic mix of receiving dopamine each time you receive positive feedback for reaching goals with the fear of missing out each day if you fail to constantly check in with your smartwatch.

Panic can also set in if your smartwatch fails to track your activity or monitor your progress correctly. The unfortunate truth is that many diet and fitness app and hardware designers do not create their products with mental health in mind. In one study published in BJPsych Open, participants reported eight negative consequences of using a fitness app:

  1. Fixation on numbers
  2. Rigid diet
  3. Obsession
  4. App dependency
  5. High sense of achievement
  6. Extreme negative emotions
  7. Motivation from ‘negative’ messages
  8. Excess competition

If you’re concerned about being addicted to your smartwatch, read our advice on how to overcome the negative habit of device addiction.

If You’re Struggling, Take a Break From Your Smartwatch

When used safely, smartwatches can bring benefits to your life. Yet, with a prominent focus on exercise, activity, and calorie burning, smartwatches can have a detrimental effect on your mental health. If you don’t see the tracking results you want, you can suffer from low self-esteem.

If you’re feeling at the mercy of your smartwatch, it might be time to take a break from it. Start by turning off notifications, removing your smartwatch during social hours, or reducing your activity goals. If you still find yourself negatively impacted by your smartwatch, it’s worth taking a physical break from wearing it.