Your smartwatch may not be as reliable as you think when it comes to tracking stress, according to a new study. While wearables like the Garmin Vivosmart 4 are marketed as health companions, research suggests they often confuse stress with excitement—flagging you as overwhelmed when you might actually be enjoying yourself.
The study, published in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science, followed 800 young adults over three months. Researchers compared the watches’ stress, fatigue, and sleep data with participants’ self-reported moods. The results showed almost no correlation between the devices’ stress readings and how people actually felt.
Eiko Fried, the study’s lead author and an associate professor at Leiden University, noted that his own Garmin incorrectly labeled workouts and social events as stressful. That’s why he cautioned that these are consumer devices, not medical devices.
Fatigue tracking performed slightly better, while sleep monitoring was the most accurate. About two-thirds of participants saw a match between their self-reported rest and the watch’s data, though the devices were better at measuring sleep duration than quality.
The researchers hope their findings will improve how wearables are used for mental health monitoring. For now, they advise taking stress scores with a grain of salt—they’re a rough estimate, not a precise measure of your well-being.
Via: The Guardian