Smartwatches - or how a gadget can quietly dismantle your silence, your day, and sometimes your relationships

 

There comes a moment when you realize you’re not wearing the watch anymore - the watch is wearing you. For me, this showed up in the loss of a friend. A strange technological side effect. It was a deep friendship, something delicate and fragile. For a year we were important to each other. Then came the device that knows everything about us except when to shut up. The messed-up smartwatch.

 

I live in the early hours. That’s when thoughts arrive. Joy too. And trouble. If you’re important to me, I share them with you. This wasn’t a problem before. His phone used to sleep in the kitchen. The smartwatch slept with him. Who could have known it was the kind that beeps at every breath? Then came the soul-killing, fatal message: “Listen, my friend, don’t text me at dawn… my watch wakes me up.”

 

I just stood there like an idiot. What did I do? Wasn’t it the watch that woke him? And what hurt most wasn’t that he didn’t mute the device. He muted me. I became the disturbance, not that ridiculous beeping. By then it didn’t matter - technology had crept between us.

 

And this is only the beginning. Today everyone has some kind of digital buddy. Mine still doesn’t yell at me to “sleep more,” or “you walked 11 steps less today," or “based on your pulse, you might be dying.” But we hear these stories constantly.

 

My favorite: a guy I know went for a run in the countryside. Suddenly the watch began screaming: “Blood pressure 350! I’ve called an ambulance! Stay where you are - GPS will locate you.” The poor bastard nearly died - not from the blood pressure, but from the existential meltdown that followed.

 

“Jesus, am I actually dying? Will I collapse in the middle of a field? What about the dog? Who gets the keys? Where even am I?” Then came thought number two: “At least every burden will fall off my shoulders. My boss can forget this week’s deadline. The bank won’t see another cent. The divorce is final - that bastard won’t inherit anything. But the dog… that’s bad. Who will love him like I do?”

 

By the time the ambulance arrived, it turned out the watch battery was dying, measuring nonsense. The nurse said: “Sir, your pulse is perfectly normal. This panting and sweating look more like stress. Drink herbal tea.” “Of course I'm stressed - a watch is screaming on my wrist that I’m dying!”

 

That’s our modern life.

 

And back to my ex-friend. I don’t blame him. He wanted to talk through the tension. The only problem: I didn’t cause the tension. The beeping bracelet on his wrist did. And this - let’s be honest - is a very common story.

 

Today we don’t move closer or farther away by our own choice. The gadget nudges us. Slowly, quietly, pretending to help. First it interrupts your morning. Then your rhythm. Then your body’s signals. Then your emotions. After a while, you no longer know when you’re tired - the watch tells you. You don’t know how your day started - the watch tells you. You don’t notice when someone is missing - you look at a graph first.

 

And at some point, it’s not the person you miss. It’s the vibration. The beep. That tiny signal that makes you feel watched - though you’re only being measured. This is how every decision slowly becomes external. As if someone were living on your wrist, a soft little coach who interferes in your life more often than any human ever did.

 

In the end the only thing left that truly belongs to you is your mind - the part even the watch can’t read. Not yet. And this is only one device we still choose to wear or remove. For now, we still have a choice. But not for long.

 

And then I think of the old, traditional wristwatch. The one that simply ticked and left you alone. It didn’t measure, didn’t correct, didn’t interfere. It was a small piece of mechanical freedom on your arm.

 

I didn’t lose my friend because of some grand drama. I lost him because a watch turned out to be stronger than me.