How to know if your wearable device is doing more harm than good

Wearable health and fitness trackers — more commonly referred to as wearables — have decidedly changed the way that we engage with our health. Devices like Apple Watches, Oura rings and WHOOP have become the go-to accessories for millions of people who are interested in tracking their wellness metrics, regardless of whether they’re heading off to work or a black-tie affair.

It’s never been easier to monitor our steps, our heart rate, and even our body temperature. But with all this health data at our fingertips (or around our fingers), it’s also easy to become consumed by these numbers.

Lucy Matz, a 27-year-old living in San Francisco, bought an Oura ring to get a baseline understanding of how sleep was affecting her health. However, she soon became fixated on her sleep score: a metric that Oura calculates by “measuring the dynamic of your resting heart rate, average body temperature, movement, and time spent in specific sleep stages, including light, deep, and rapid eye movement (REM),” according to its website.

Oura’s unique algorithm combines these metrics to give users a score from 0-100, with 85-100 deemed the “optimal” range. “I’ll be watching my sleep score, and I’ll start to get anxious about the possibility of getting sick,” said Matz. “I’ll get a notification that says, ‘We see minor or major signs of something that’s hindering [your sleep.’]”

While it’s helpful for Matz to be aware of her sleep patterns, she says that it’s led her to dwell on her health, which can interfere with her day-to-day activities. “It gives me anxiety if I have plans [and get a bad sleep score], like, ‘Oh, should I not do it?’”

Like Matz, 27-year-old Maya Kalkstein also believes that the “self-fulfilling prophecy” of her Oura ring has increased her stress levels. “I just really do feel like if [the Oura ring] tells you that you’re not feeling well, or you’re not well-rested, then that is kind of how you will conduct yourself,” she said.

For others, the numbers on these devices became more important than how they felt. Chris Mangano first got a WHOOP, which labels itself as a “wearable health and fitness coach” in an effort to keep up the training mentality he had as a college athlete.

Over time, the 26-year-old says he became addicted to tracking his metrics on the WHOOP, which included heart rate variability, resting heart rate, and VO2 max. “If the WHOOP died in the middle of my run or workout, it very much became like, ‘Oh, this workout doesn’t count then,’” he said.

While wearables have allowed for greater insight into our progress toward our health and fitness goals, experts argue that they have also led to increased anxiety. Clinical social worker and psychotherapist Phil Lane wrote in Psychology Today that “though well-intentioned, these forms of technology can lead us to fixation and an unhealthy obsession with our bodily data, serving to defeat their intended purpose, which is to keep us alert to how our bodies are functioning.”

For those who might be struggling to make it through a day without closing the rings on their Apple Watch, there are ways to “unplug” and create some healthy distance between ourselves and our wearables.

Be realistic with your goals

Dr. Christy Lane, a co-founder of the Stanford Wearable Health Lab and fertility insurance company Flora Fertility believes that the way to maximize the benefits of a wearable is not to see it as an overall indicator of health, but instead narrow in on an individual aspect of personal well-being, such as steps. “People can really only focus on one or two goals at a time,” she says. “You need to be realistic.” It’s important for people not to set too lofty goals, which can cause unnecessary stress and pressure.

Think about the why

Before setting up a wearable, Lane suggests that people think about what their overall objective is. “They need to personally think about why they’re [using a wearable] and what they care about,” she says. “Are they doing it because they’re having bad sleep? Are they doing it because they want to lose weight? Are they doing it because they’ve been told by a doctor?”

Lane argues that without clear direction on how a wearable can help you reach certain goals, users will become overwhelmed by “trying to consume all the data and do all the things.”

Understand your own relationship with anxiety

In addition to understanding your intentions, it’s also important to think about whether you are someone who easily worries about your health. “Ask yourself if you have some kind of health anxiety problem, and if you think the answer is yes, then you might want to scale back some of your use of wearables, especially if you suspect that it may be inadvertently contributing to your anxiety,” said Dr. Paul Greene, director of the Manhattan Center for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in New York City. “It’s not something like smoking cigarettes that’s unhealthy for everyone. It’s really something that is unhealthy for people that have an anxiety proclivity.”

Ask a physician

Greene suggests that people speak with their physician about whether they need to be gathering certain data on their wearables. “Sometimes doctors will prescribe monitors, like heart rate monitors, for example, for people that have cardiac issues, because they want to capture exactly this kind of data,” he says. “So it’s not out of the question that a doctor could say that this is valuable information for the patient to get.”

But a doctor might argue that collecting other types of data might not prove to be that useful, especially if the patient is prone to anxiety. “In that case, [the doctor] may say there are more cons than pros,” Greene said.

Focus on the larger trends, not the individual numbers

Over the course of any given day, the metrics that wearables track are guaranteed to fluctuate, which can be unsettling for some. “It is important to recognize that anxiety often causes us to seek definitive answers, our anxious minds telling us that only a concrete answer can eliminate our worry,” Lane writes. However, when it comes to our health, there is not usually a singular answer. Instead, it can be more accurate to look at trends over time, as opposed to any one particular data point.

Consider speaking to a mental health provider

If you’re finding it difficult to focus on anything but your latest sleep score, it may be worth speaking to a mental health provider. Many anxiety specialists use a combination of tools and modalities, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), to help manage symptoms and work through harmful thought patterns.

This story was originally published October 31, 2025 at 1:57 PM with the headline "How to know if your wearable device is doing more harm than good."