Why I Gave Up My Smartwatch

Photo by Mitchell Hollander on Unsplash

Somewhere between the first time I tapped my wrist to skip a song and the three hundredth time I anxiously checked my resting heart rate, I started to hate my Apple Watch.

The promise of the smartwatch was elegance, convenience, optimization. What I got was constant data drip, subtle panic, and the faint sense that my pulse belonged to someone else.

I bought my smartwatch like most people do: for health. I wanted to track my sleep, move more, maybe train for a 10K. I had just read about behavioral feedback loops, and I believed, earnestly, that quantified nudges would shape better habits. The promise of self-knowledge through numbers has always had a kind of rationalist glamour.

It feels like wisdom.

But wisdom isn’t meant to be a feeling.

The Tyranny of Metrics

Michel Foucault once described the modern subject as a self-surveying creature. Bent over spreadsheets, calorie counters, and productivity graphs, we monitor ourselves with the vigilance once reserved for prison guards. The smartwatch is simply the most intimate upgrade of that tendency: a panopticon you clasp on willingly every morning.

At first, it’s exciting. You learn how long you sleep, how fast your heart beats, how many steps you walk. But knowledge invites…