Wellness Watch or Worry Watch? Negative Psychological Impacts of Wearable Devices

Psychological impacts stemming from the use of wearable devices are important to study because wearables are now widely adopted and promoted as tools for healthier living. While prior research has documented positive psychological impacts, far less attention has been given to the negative ones. In this work, we ask whether these negative psychological impacts are isolated anecdotes or reflect a systematic pattern, and whether the wearable computing research community adequately engages with them. First, in a large-scale study with a U.S. sample of 264 participants (149 wearable users, 115 non-users), we found that wearable users exhibited significantly h igher o bsessive-compulsive t raits t han n on-users (p < 0 .05). Moreover, based on free-text and Likert scale responses, approximately 1 in 4 wearable users reported negative psychological impacts from calorie tracking, smart notifications, and sleep tracking. All negative impacts could be broadly categorized into anxiety and worry, guilt and pressure, obsession and compulsion, false information and information overload, and negative self-image. To contextualize these findings, next we analyzed 782 papers published between 2024-2025 in 5 flagship wearable/mobile computing venues. We found that only 5 out of 123 wearable-related papers focused on negative psychological impacts as the core research direction. Our findings demonstrate a clear disconnect: the psychological toll of wearables is a common user experience, yet it remains largely unaddressed by the research community. We call for a broader focus on the responsible development of these technologies, one that treats the assessment of psychological impacts as a central component of wearable design and evaluation, similar to how accuracy, system aspects, privacy, and usability are considered.