Snooze Button Pressed Over 55% Of Time After Sleep, Alarm, Study Says
You could say that people are hitting the snooze button at a rather alarming frequency. Over half (55.6%) of the sleep sessions recorded in a study published in journal Scientific Reports ended with a pressing of the snooze button. In fact, when people pressed the snooze button, they tended to do it again and again—hitting it an average of 2.4 times per sleep session for an average of 10.8 minutes extra snooze. So if you find yourself regularly using the snooze button like so many of the study participants, should you just let such behavior rest? Or would this be a you snooze you lose situation?
First, here's a heads up (as opposed to a heads down on the pillow) about the study that produced these results. The study was an analyses of data from 21,222 people in different parts of the world using a smartphone app named SleepCycle. Most (43.6%) of the participants were in the United States, followed by 12.7% from the United Kingdom, 9.9% from Japan, 6.5% from Australia and 6.2% from Germany. The app can function as an alarm clock, allowing the user to choose either a traditional snooze, where hitting a snooze button turns off the alarm for specified duration before the alarm goes off again, or what's called a 'smart snooze' where the alarm clock will sound again depending on where someone is in his or her sleep cycle. A team from the Brigham and Women's Hospital (Rebecca Robbins, Matthew D. Weaver, Stuart F. Quan and Charles A. Czeisler) and Sleep Cycle (Daniel Sääf and Michael Gradisar) conducted the study.
Of note, the researchers tossed out any sleep sessions that were less than four hours. That's probably because sleeping for less than four hours is more of a nap than a full I'm-going-to-get-in-my-jammies-and-see-you-in-the-morning sleep session. This left 3,017,276 recorded sleep sessions from July 1, 2022, through December 31, 2022, to be analyzed for the study.
Snooze button behavior did vary by day of the week. Not surprisingly, it was more common to hit the snooze button Monday through Friday than it was on weekends. Any guesses as to why this was the case? It wouldn't happen to be a word that rhymes with twerk, would it? Although the study didn't track why specifically people hit the snooze button, it's likely that work had something to do with this trend.
Snooze button behavior did also have some variation by month of the year. In the Northern Hemisphere, December had on average the highest amount of snooze use, with the snooze button being pushed an average of 2.62 times for 11.83 minutes of snooze per sleep session. By contrast, September had lowest snooze alarm activity, with averages of 2.40 times and 10.58 minutes.
Guess what happened in the Southern Hemisphere? Yep, this was flipped around with July being the snooziest month with an average of 2.35 snooze alarm presses and 10.2 minutes of snooze per sleep session and November being the least snoozy month at 2.29 and 10.12 minutes.
So, it looks like the months that are traditionally the coldest with the shortest durations of daylight had the greater snooze button activity. This probably isn't super surprising either since getting out of bed when it's cold and dark may not be as easy as when it's warn and sunny outside.
There wasn't a huge amount of variation by country, although Sweden came out on top in terms of snooze alarm use (an average of 2.7 times) and snooze sleep (11.7 minutes). Those in Japan used snooze alarms the least (2.2 times) with the least snooze sleep (9.2 minutes). Australians also used the snooze alarms 2.2 times on average. The United States came in third in both categories at 2.5 times and 11.3 minutes. Naturally, a country's averages shouldn't necessarily apply to everyone in that country. In another words, should you encounter someone from Sweden, it's not appropriate to say, 'I bet you hit the snooze button more often.'
Then there was the sex, meaning the sex of the participants. Women on average hit the snooze more often (2.5 times per sleep session) than men (2.3 times). In the process, women spent more time on the snooze (11.5 minutes versus 10.2 minutes).
So, what might this say about women and men? Again, population averages don't necessarily reflect what's happening with each individual. Plus, such a population cohort study doesn't let you know what's happening an the individual level. Does this mean that more women are getting less restful sleep than men? Does this mean that more women are dreading the day whether it's due to having more work or more unpleasant circumstances than men? It's difficult to say from this study alone.
One thing's for sure, that extra amount of shut eye after the alarm goes off won't be the same as getting that amount added to your sleep in an interrupted manner. I written previously in Forbes about the importance of regularly getting enough sleep and potential health consequences of not doing so. Well, a good night's sleep doesn't just mean a certain total number of hours and minutes, no matter how they add up. Instead, it means cycling sequentially through all of the following stages of sleep, as described by Eric Suni for the Sleep Foundation:
Now, you may cycle through these stages multiple times during a lengthy sleep session. But you have to go through the stages in the above order. Usually, you won't hit the pillow and suddenly be in REM Sleep, for example. The same applies to when you are falling back asleep.
Therefore, hitting the snooze button will likely get you to no more than Stage 1 sleep, if that. This wouldn't bring you anywhere near restorative sleep. In essence, snooze time is lose time. You are losing time being either half or lightly asleep.
Therefore, it's better to wake up and get up after that first alarm goes off. Otherwise, you are only delaying the inevitable. Ideally, you wouldn't even need the alarm and would be waking up naturally, excited to welcome the new day. But that's another story.
If you find yourself relying on that snooze button regularly, chances are you aren't getting enough sleep. Therefore, it's better to either get to sleep earlier on a regular basis or set your alarm for a later time for when you really are going to get up and stay awake. While the snooze button may seem like a nice sleep preserver, it really isn't. You may not know what you really lose when you snooze.
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