// ENGADGET — HARDWARE & GADGET
Why people might ditch their smartwatches for something simpler
Tech has taken over our lives. We have smartphones, smartwatches and smart TVs. There are even smart fridges, smart toilets and smart sex dolls. (Or, uh, so I hear.) And with the rise of AI, Big Tech is now jumping on the smartglasses bandwagon... again.
An analog rebellion is brewing. I recently went to a Barnes & Noble for the first time in well over a decade. I was surprised at how many young, hip people were there, scouring the print books and vinyl records. Then there's the resurgence of digital cameras, film cameras and cassette tapes.
When smartwatches started popping up in the mid-2010s, they promised quick info at a glance without having to grab your phone. In theory, that meant freeing you up to engage with the world around you. But in practice? Well, over a decade later, not everyone finds that to be the case.
To be clear, nobody's arguing that people are ditching smartwatches left and right. In fact, the market is steadily growing, not shrinking. But not everyone wants to keep marching in that direction.
"My smartwatch kept me attached to b******t I wanted it to get me away from," born-again analog watch user RadioAdam posted. But not everyone needs to go back to the days of Casio and Timex. Minimal wearable tech products can track your fitness, just without feeling like you have a second phone on your wrist.
The persistent nag of the online world can feel even more intrusive when it's on your wrist. It's one thing to hear your phone chirp in a pocket or bag. It's another to have a wearable device poking you every time something comes in.
"I don't want my wrist to communicate with me at all" u/NeoMoose wrote in the Whoop subreddit. "My phone is already too much distraction." Of course, you can silence notifications. But at that point, you (like these smartwatch expats) might question how much you need one in the first place.
Big Tech sold us the always-online lifestyle as a utopia. But the reality has too often resembled a dopamine-addiction hellscape. And if you're looking to cut down on devices, smartwatches are an obvious candidate for the first item on your list.
Smartwatches can suffer from feature creep. While an Apple Watch has potentially lifesaving ones like fall detection and the ability to call emergency services from your wrist, it (and its competitors) also have... lots of other stuff.
For instance, Redditor u/Adventurous_Rice_731 briefly switched from a minimal Whoop to a Garmin smartwatch and quickly regretted the decision. "Went to my first [workout] and realized how many times I was actively checking the screen, looking to see if all my reps were recording," they posted. "Overall, I just found myself glued to it even during TV time." Simpler devices could keep you focused on not just the task or activity at hand, but also help you stay present in moments.