“The future of health is on your wrist,” Apple tweeted in December alongside a 15-second ad for its Apple Watch Series 7, which features LTE connectivity. In the clip (longer versions of which were released on January 1st), the artificially intelligent voice of Siri states, “The owner of this Apple Watch has taken a hard fall,” before reciting the longitude and latitude. The story, one of a few Apple is using to market the safety feature of its new watches and updated operating system, was that a man, Bob B., was knocked unconscious while biking. His watch called 911.

This is not why I bought an Apple Watch recently, but it didn’t make me regret it, either. Such is the lure of what Chris Gillard calls luxury surveillance, the myriad tracking services marketed to the wealthy that are otherwise imposed on others. Although I don’t believe in the “nothing to hide” idea, I’m still one of those assholes with this thing on my wrist, having paid for what amounts to a fancy tracking bracelet.

Yet, I’m — somewhat shamefully — comforted by the idea that, if it came to it, my watch might save my life. For while the promise of Apple’s ads is, on the surface, one of security, a little deeper down the message of tracking technology like this is a bit different, a bit more twisted. Paradoxically, what Apple is actually marketing with its surveillance tech isn’t just security, but rather freedom, albeit a warped one: With a watch monitoring you at all times, you can now do whatever you want!

I’ll confess here that it’s this, in part, that drove me to buy an Apple Watch. Not the “freedom” to go mountain biking knowing that if I fall the watch will call 911, but freedom of another kind — freedom from another piece of technology: my phone. The rationale, if you can call it that, was to limit the lure of my iPhone. With the watch, I can still know I have an email from work, but I’m unable to fully engage in the same way I would if I had my phone. As for social media, it’s just not accessible. So, a fancy bit of surveillance tech to distance myself from my other surveillance tech. Freedom, I guess. And it works, sort of. Since having the watch, I’ve looked at my phone less, checked my social feeds less, and been less drawn into its depths.

But of course there’s a flip side. While I’m no longer drawn to, or perhaps no longer bombarded by, the world of information out there, the Apple Watch continually sends me updates all the same, on the world in here — that is to say, inside me. If I leave my house for a walk, within a few minutes, my watch is asking me whether I’m walking and whether I’d like to track this walk and add it to my official tally of fitness events for the day. Of course, if I say yes, it will store that information and update my totals, with the goal being to close my rings, the circular visualization Apple developed to chart baseline activity like walking or standing. When I meet these goals and the rings are closed, the watch will let me know.

Even when I’m not doing anything, the watch tells me the metrics of my inactivity, noting for instance that my resting heart rate has fallen. Is that a problem? I wonder for the first time in my life. Is there something wrong with me? Does this bit of surveillance technology suddenly know something about my life that I don’t? Apple no doubt likes those stories, too — the ones about the people its watches saved from death by deadly heart attack because early detection of an irregular heart rate alerted that something was wrong. Am I about to die? I ask myself as I watch The Bachelor.

So it goes that while I may be less alert to the data stream everyone else creates, I’m now more focused on the one that I manufacture, just by living — a stream of information that I would have never really otherwise known. I can turn it off, obviously, but at this point that seems unlikely. Just as one becomes addicted to knowing what’s happening outside the door, so too do we become addicted to knowing what’s happening inside our bodies. A data dearth — that is, a return to how I existed for decades previously — would now feel…uninformed. Perhaps even dangerous. Can I still do whatever I want if I’m not wearing this watch?

There’s no turning back now. I will now self-monitor for vital signs. I will surveil myself more closely than I had ever felt surveilled, intruded-upon, by the outside world. In essence, I have created a personalized, internalized panopticon. Even if I’m not actually watching myself, I’ll know it’s possible I’ll have an eye on me. Nothing I do will get past me now. I have imprisoned myself within myself. Watching.