Snooze alarms steal hours of sleep every month, new research shows

Snooze alarms steal hours of sleep every month, new research shows

Why did so many people hit Snooze? This global smartphone study finds surprising patterns and raises questions about how repeated alarms can impact our sleep health.

Harvard Medical School researchers conducted a study of users of a smartphone sleep monitoring application to examine the prevalence and characteristics of snooze alarm use, a typical but poorly understood human behavior. The results will be published in the journalScientific reports.

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Sleep is a complex and dynamic physiological process designed to maintain health and well-being. Internal circadian rhythms, along with time spent awake, influence the timing and duration of sleep. However, people often submit to these biological regulatory processes for personal or professional reasons.

The recommended nighttime sleep duration for adults is between 7 and 9 hours. However, in recent decades, a trend of not meeting this recommendation has been observed in global populations, which may increase the risk to both physical and mental health.

Although people wake up naturally after adequate sleep, they often require assistance, such as: B. using an alarm clock to achieve a desired wake time under conditions of insufficient sleep duration. The “snooze” feature commonly available on alarm clocks is designed to repeatedly alert the sleeper at fixed intervals after the initial alarm. However, according to sleep experts, a sleeper should set an alarm for the last realistic wake time instead of setting a snooze alarm to get as much consolidated, uninterrupted, high-quality sleep as possible.

Using a snooze alarm is a typical but poorly understood human behavior. Few studies have examined the health effects of snooze alarms and reported that this practice is associated with short sleep and poor quality sleep and sleepiness upon waking.

In the current study, researchers analyzed a large data set to examine the prevalence and characteristics of snooze alarm use across countries, cultures, and climates.

Study design

The study analyzed a large pool of data from users of a smartphone sleep monitoring application called “Sleepcycle.” The database included six months of data from 21,222 app users and more than 3 million sleep sessions from users on four continents. The data set included users who opted in to the traditional snooze feature, logged in sleep sessions on 50% or more of the nights in each month of the monitoring interval, used the app on an iPhone versus an Android device, and opted in for their data to be used in research.

Study results

Analysis of users' sleep sessions at night revealed that more than half (specifically 55.6%) of the sessions produce a snooze alarm. Of all users, about 45% were heavy snooze alarm users, 28% were moderate users, and 27% were light users.

Compared to light and moderate users who used Snooze alarm less often and showed more consistent sleep times, heavy Snooze alarm users who used the alarm almost every day and multiple times each day showed irregular sleep/wake times.

Overall, users hit the snooze alarm approximately 2.4 times per day and spent an average of 10.8 minutes. This equates to a loss of almost 6 hours of sleep each month. Heavy users selected the snooze alarm approximately 4 times per day, resulting in approximately 20 minutes of snoozing duration. On the other hand, light users selected the snooze alarm an average of 1.2 times per day, resulting in a 3 minute snooze duration.

Use of a snooze alarm was more common on weekdays (Monday to Friday) and less common on weekends (Saturday and Sunday). Fewer weekend commitments among employees and students could be the reason for this less frequent use.

The duration of snooze alarm use was significantly longer in women than men. The researchers suggest that this could be due to factors such as additional child care and household tasks over work responsibilities, or an increased risk of insomnia in women, which could be the reason for women's higher reliance on the snooze alarm.

Month-to-month variations in snooze alarm use were minimal in the study population. Northern hemisphere users showed slightly higher usage in December and lower usage in September, while southern hemisphere users showed the opposite trend. These variations could be associated with changes in seasonal sleep patterns due to factors such as less access to natural light in the winter months, potentially leading to a delay in circadian rhythms.

Frequency of snooze alarm use was also higher among long sleepers (more than 9 hours of sleep) than among short sleepers (less than 7 hours of sleep) or recommended sleep durations (7 to 9 hours of sleep). As the researchers mentioned, higher snooze alarm usage observed after long sleep sessions could indicate hyperomnia or compensatory sleep to recover from sleep deprivation.

The frequency of use of the snooze alarm was also higher among sleepers who went to bed later than usual than those who went to bed earlier. Unusual sleep time is more common among shift workers, who may have insufficient time in bed and thus rely more on the snooze alarm. Additionally, users with misaligned sleep may experience more fragmented sleep and thus greater sensitivity to the snooze alarm.

While the study provides valuable insights from a large international data set using objective snooze alarm data, the researchers acknowledge certain limitations. This includes app-derived sleep data, which can overestimate actual sleep duration because it does not account for the time required to sleep or wake during the night. Additionally, it was not certain whether users actually slept between alarms and the sample of app users may not be fully representative of the general global population. The study also had no information about participants' ages or self-reported feelings of grogginess while awake.

Overall, study results indicate that higher frequency of snooze alarm use reflects poor sleep patterns and may be part of the poor sleep health phenotype. Given that snooze alarm consumption is discouraged by experts to avoid sleep fragmentation, the researchers underscore the need for future research to understand the effects of snooze alarm consumption on daytime performance and overall health. They also suggest that public health messages encouraging individuals to set their alarm for the latest possible wake time, rather than relying on the snooze button, could be a viable strategy to encourage better sleep habits.

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