Help or Hinder? What New Zealand’s Wearables Survey Really Tells Us
Smart watches, rings, and even smart clothing have quietly become part of everyday life. A decade ago, real-time heart rate and sleep scores belonged to elite athletes and sports labs. Now they sit on the wrists of teenagers, busy parents, and yes, your own mum (who, like Stuff journalist Lloyd Burr’s mother, may occasionally log a “bike ride” while mowing the lawn).
Stuff’s recent Health of the Nation survey took a close look at how New Zealanders are actually using these devices, and the results are more interesting, and a little more uncomfortable, than the glossy marketing would suggest. As someone who spends every day helping people get fitter and healthier, I find this data genuinely useful. So let’s unpack what it says, and what it means for you.
Who’s actually wearing them
The first finding is no great surprise: the younger you are, the more likely you are to use a wearable. More than 60 percent of users sit in the 18 to 44 age bracket, with the single biggest group being 25 to 34 year olds.
That’s telling. This is the demographic juggling careers, mortgages, and young families all at once. The wearable becomes one more tool to help manage a frantic, time-poor stage of life. At the other end, just 13 percent of people aged 65 and over use them, making them by far the least likely group to strap on the tech.
The finding that raised eyebrows: users are more stressed
Here’s where it gets fascinating. Across every category of stress, ranging from always, to often, to sometimes, wearable users were more likely to report feeling stressed and overwhelmed than non-users. In fact, more than twice as many non-users said they never feel stressed, compared to those wearing the tech.
So what’s going on? The survey offers two honest interpretations, and I think both deserve a moment of reflection.
The first reading is that staying unplugged may simply be better for your stress levels. Constant streams of data, scores, and notifications give the anxious mind something new to fixate on. The second reading is gentler on the devices: the gadgets aren’t necessarily creating the stress, they’re just the chosen tool of an already overwhelmed generation trying to wrestle some control over the chaos.
My honest take? It’s probably a bit of both, and the direction matters less than what you do about it. If your watch is helping you feel more in control, brilliant. If you find yourself checking your readiness score before you’ve even decided how you feel, that’s worth noticing.
Armed with evidence at the doctor’s door
The survey also paints a clear picture of the modern, data-savvy patient. Wearable users are more likely to completely trust health websites like the Ministry of Health or WebMD, and a meaningful slice are experimenting with AI for wellness advice.
The result is that people now turn up to their GP refusing to go in blind. They arrive armed with numbers, patterns, and printouts. With nearly half of all respondents regularly using patient portals and a third of wearable users completely trusting health websites, the consultation room dynamic has genuinely shifted. That’s not all bad, an engaged patient is often a healthier one, but it does change the conversation between you and your doctor in ways worth being aware of.
A personal trainer on your wrist, not a doctor
This is where the experts add some welcome perspective. Professor Chris Button from the University of Otago’s School of Physical Education, Sport, and Exercise Sciences is broadly positive but firmly realistic. He wouldn’t dismiss wearables, because paired with the right apps they can be genuinely effective at motivating people. But he urges us to view them critically.
His key point is one I echo with clients constantly: a smart watch only estimates your heart rate from the pulse at your wrist, which can be inaccurate. A chest strap will give you far more reliable numbers. Rings and smart clothing now spit out huge volumes of metrics, breathing frequency, sweat rate, and more, yet Button reckons only a tiny fraction of what these devices report is actually useful or credible.
His verdict is the line worth tattooing on the inside of every wearable: they are more like a personal trainer on your wrist, not a doctor. And on turning up to your GP with a wall of data, he gently cautions that the doctor may well have to explain that some of those numbers simply aren’t accurate.
When sleep tracking backfires
Associate Professor Angela Campbell, who runs Otago’s WellSleep laboratory, raises a concern I see in my own coaching: sleep anxiety. She’s seeing plenty of people made anxious by their devices. If your watch tells you you’ve had a bad night, you start to worry about it, even when you’d have happily woken up feeling fine otherwise.
Campbell isn’t convinced the sleep data is especially accurate, and her advice is to find it interesting without reading too much into it. There is, though, one genuinely useful exception. If you wear your watch consistently and it shows you a steady pattern, then one night looks suddenly and dramatically different, that’s probably worth paying attention to. The value is in the trend, not the nightly score.
Even Labour’s health spokesperson Dr Ayesha Verrall, spotted wearing one during her Health of the Nation interview, has a wry nickname for hers. “I call it a mean watch,” she laughed. “It tells me all sorts of nasty things about how much exercise I’m doing.”
So, help or hinder?
Here’s how I’d land it for you. Wearables are a tool, neither a villain nor a magic wand. Used well, they motivate, they nudge you to move, and they can flag the occasional pattern worth a closer look. Used poorly, they hand an already busy mind one more thing to fret over, and they can lend false confidence to numbers that aren’t always right.
A few principles keep them firmly on the “help” side of the ledger:
- Treat trends over scores. A single night’s sleep number or a one-off heart rate spike tells you very little. The pattern over weeks tells you plenty.
- Know the limits. Wrist heart rate is an estimate. If you need accuracy for training, a chest strap wins.
- Let it motivate, not dictate. If the data is getting you out the door for a walk, wonderful. If it’s the first thing you check before deciding how you feel, take a step back.
- It informs, it doesn’t diagnose. Bring curiosity to your GP, not a verdict. A personal trainer on your wrist, remember, not a doctor.
The healthiest relationship with your wearable is the same as the healthiest relationship with food, training, or any other tool I work with: use it with intention, hold it lightly, and never let the number override how you actually feel.