Credit: Kris Carlon / Android Authority
- Study finds smartwatch stress scores often don’t match how you actually feel.
- Researchers tracked 800 Garmin users for three months and saw “basically zero” correlation for stress.
- Sleep tracking was more accurate, but better at logging hours slept than rest quality.
They’re meant to be your health sidekick, you might suspect that there’s only so much that a wearable can tell you about your mental state from taking a pulse reading. If this wasn’t already obvious, new research appears to confirm that your smartwatch might be completely misreading your mood.
A study published in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science and reported by The Guardian found that a smartwatch often confuses stress with excitement — and could flag you as overworked when you’re actually having fun. Researchers tracked 800 young adults wearing Garmin Vivosmart 4 devices for three months, comparing the watches’ stress, fatigue, and sleep scores with what participants reported feeling at the time.