Millions of people are checking their sleep scores, stress levels, and energy metrics daily, but a growing body of evidence suggests that constant health monitoring can backfire, creating anxiety and unhealthy obsessions rather than genuine wellness improvements. The global wearables industry reached nearly $100 billion in revenue in 2025 and is expected to hit $230 billion by 2033, yet researchers and doctors are increasingly concerned that the flood of health data is doing more harm than good for many users.

Katie Anne Hayes, a 29-year-old who purchased a Garmin watch to track her long COVID symptoms, experienced this firsthand. She became obsessed with the device's "Body Battery" feature, which claims to measure how much energy remains in her tank. What started as helpful self-monitoring quickly spiraled into anxiety. Hayes would wake up stressed about her overnight battery levels and feel frustrated when the metric dipped before important work meetings. Eventually, her family urged her to remove the watch entirely. "I got into this bad negative feedback loop with it," Hayes explained. "Taking off the watch, and having it be less of a mental reminder of the fatigue that I might experience, I think, was helpful".

Why Are We Outsourcing Our Health to Algorithms?

The explosion in health tracking reflects a broader cultural shift toward preventive medicine and "optimization." About a third of Americans now wear smartwatches, rings, and bands to monitor their health and fitness. Searches for full-body MRI scans, genetic testing, VO2 max testing, and metabolic analysis have surged more than 200% in the first three months of 2026 compared to the same period last year. Function Health, a personalized testing platform offering upward of 150 tests, is valued at $2.5 billion, while smart ring maker Oura, valued at $11 billion, is expected to go public later this year.

But this abundance of data is creating a fundamental problem: people are increasingly asking "What does my app say?" instead of "How do I truly feel?"

"You stop asking, 'How do I truly feel?' and you may start asking, 'What does my app say?' This is subtle, but it is a significant shift," said Dr. Sandeep Kishore, a physician-scientist and associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Sandeep Kishore, Physician-Scientist and Associate Professor at University of California, San Francisco

The problem is compounded by the fact that consumer wellness technology is generating massive amounts of quasi-medical data without the systems or expertise to interpret it correctly.

"The vast majority of metrics that we can measure are a complete waste of time. They don't tell us anything meaningful about health," explained Nick Tiller, an exercise scientist and research associate at the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

Nick Tiller, Exercise Scientist and Research Associate at Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center

How to Recognize When Health Tracking Becomes Harmful?

• Obsessive Checking: If you find yourself compulsively checking your sleep score, stress level, or energy metrics multiple times per day, especially before important events, this may indicate an unhealthy relationship with the data.
• Anxiety-Driven Decisions: When your mood or decisions about your day are determined by what your app says rather than how you actually feel, the tracker has crossed from helpful tool to source of stress.
• Misplaced Confidence: If you're dismissing legitimate health concerns because your device didn't flag them, you may be relying too heavily on incomplete data.

The Sleep Tracking Problem: When Monitoring Causes Insomnia?

Sleep tracking illustrates the paradox perfectly. While wearable devices have improved significantly in recent years, they still have substantial limitations. Kelly Baron, a clinical psychologist at the University of Utah who specializes in behavioral sleep medicine, noted that devices have come "a long way" in tracking sleep, though their estimates of sleep stages remain limited. More importantly, she emphasized that people shouldn't fixate on individual night's data. "What matters are averages and patterns," Baron explained.

Yet many users do exactly the opposite. Researchers have even coined a term for this phenomenon: "orthosomnia," modeled after "orthorexia" (obsession with healthy eating). Orthosomnia describes a condition where people's preoccupation with their sleep readings actually makes their sleep worse and leads to insomnia.

"Is it making you feel better or for worse? Do you get up in the morning and look at the number and decide that's how your day's going to go?" asked Kelly Baron, highlighting the key question users should ask themselves.

Kelly Baron, Clinical Psychologist at University of Utah

The accuracy problem extends beyond sleep stages. Apple Watches have an FDA-approved feature that can detect signs of potential sleep apnea, but many wearers don't understand what this means. If the watch doesn't send an alert, that doesn't mean the wearer is free of sleep apnea; most devices simply aren't cleared to detect it. Dr. Jesse Greer, founder of Preamble Health, a preventive healthcare clinic, reported that he's had numerous patients who insist they don't have sleep apnea because their device data says so, only to discover through proper testing that they have significant sleep apnea. "I can't tell you how many times we've actually tested, found pretty bad sleep apnea, and the Oura ring is sitting there telling them that they've got a 90 sleep score," Greer noted.

When Does Health Tracking Actually Help?

Self-tracking isn't inherently harmful. For some people, wearables can spark positive motivation to move more, eat better, or establish earlier bedtimes. Deborah Lupton, a sociologist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, noted that trackers may also give people a sense of control over their health and can help those with chronic or contested conditions gain better acknowledgment from healthcare providers by providing "real data" to show doctors.

The key distinction lies in how the data is used. An arbitrary goal like 10,000 steps per day, originally created by marketers, can still be beneficial if it motivates someone to leave the couch. But when tracking becomes obsessive, anxiety-inducing, or leads to misplaced confidence in incomplete data, it crosses from wellness tool into potential harm. The challenge for consumers is learning to use these technologies intentionally rather than allowing the algorithms to dictate their perception of health.