For millions who strap a small device to their wrist each morning, the promise is health — but the experience, for many, has quietly become something closer to surveillance. Wearable technology, designed to encourage movement and rest, has borrowed the grammar of video games: streaks, rings, badges, and scores that transform the body into a performance to be judged daily. Experts in persuasive design and wearable systems warn that when a number on a screen begins to outweigh lived experience — when a person skips a midnight World Cup match not for sleep's sake but for a sleep score's sake — th