When Digital Encouragement Becomes Digital Overload: A Qualitative Analysis of Self-Identified Highly Sensitive Users’ Accounts of Wearable Health Technologies on Reddit

Wearable health technologies and mobile health (mHealth) applications are widely promoted as tools for self-management, motivation, and behavior change. Yet these benefits may not be experienced uniformly across users. This qualitative study examines how self-identified highly sensitive users, alongside adjacent mainstream and digital-minimalist users, describe alerts, activity rings, streaks, and other interface features associated with wearable health technologies. Drawing on 15 Reddit discussion threads posted within the five years preceding data collection across r/hsp, r/AppleWatch, and r/digitalminimalism, the study analyzes 507 visible textual items using reflexive thematic analysis informed by critical health communication and digital sociology. Three themes were identified: (1) sensory disruption through alerts, alarms, notifications, and haptic prompts; (2) metric-based pressure and quantified self-evaluation associated with activity rings, streaks, and daily goals; and (3) boundary work, selective disengagement, and technological pruning as forms of digital self-care. The findings suggest that common mHealth communication features, such as reminders, progress feedback, streak alerts, and visual goal indicators, can be experienced as motivating by some users but intrusive, exhausting, or anxiety-provoking by others, particularly when they are difficult to customize or ignore. The article contributes to health communication research by showing how communication design features shape emotional responses and adaptive practices, and by arguing for more sensory-inclusive, flexible approaches to digital health design.