Often, when someone aims to wake up at 6 a.m., the temptation to steal a few extra minutes of sleep by hitting the snooze button is all too common. It feels like a harmless indulgence. A few peaceful moments before the day begins. But are those brief moments of rest really doing anything good for the body? A new study suggests that those couple of moments might be doing more harm than good.
A new study led by researchers at Mass General Brigham found that, despite sleep experts warning against using the snooze function on an alarm clock, it’s a common practice. The findings are published in Scientific Reports.Though sleep experts recommend against snoozing after a wake-up alarm, the new study found that more than 50% of sleep sessions included snoozing, with users averaging 11 minutes of extra rest. To understand how people use the snooze function, the researchers analyzed more than 3 million nights of sleep data from over 21,000 users of the Sleep Cycle app. They found that the snooze function was used in nearly 56% of logged sleep sessions. Around 45% of study subjects hit the snooze button on more than 80% of mornings. These heavy users snoozed, on average, 20 minutes a day. “Many of us hit the snooze alarm in the morning with the hope of getting a ‘little more sleep,’ but this widely practiced phenomenon has received little attention in sleep research. In a global sample we found that more than half of sleep sessions end in a snooze alarm, and users spent an average of 11 minutes in between snooze alarms each morning before waking,” lead author Rebecca Robbins, PhD, in the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system said in a statement.
Interestingly, the dependency on the snooze button varied by day of the week. More snooze alarms were used during the typical work week (Monday through Friday), with the lowest snooze alarm utilization on Saturday and Sunday mornings!The researchers also found that snooze alarm was used less among those sleeping five or fewer hours. This could be because short sleepers are cutting sleep short due to occupational responsibilities, which would require them to wake up and start their day, leaving little time for a snooze. Meanwhile, the heavy users of the snooze alarm (those relying on the snooze alarm on more than 80% of mornings studied) spent on average 20 minutes in between snooze alarms. The researchers noticed that heavy snooze alarm users also showed more erratic sleep schedules than other categories of users.
While many think the snooze button is saving them some sleep, in reality, it is disrupting restorative sleep. “Unfortunately, the snooze alarm disrupts some of the most important stages of sleep. The hours just before waking are rich in rapid eye movement sleep. Hitting the snooze alarm will interrupt these critical stages of sleep and typically only offer you light sleep in between snooze alarms. The best approach for optimizing your sleep and next day performance is to set your alarm for the latest possible time, then commit to getting out of bed when your first alarm goes off,” Robbins added. The researchers also noticed that people living in the US, Sweden, and Germany had the highest snooze button use, while those living in Japan and Australia had the lowest.
