Erratic Sleep Patterns Tied to Higher Snooze Alarm Use Among Adults

Individuals who use the snooze alarm are more likely to have disrupted sleep patterns, which affects rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, according to the findings of a study published in Scientific Reports.

Recent trends indicate that people are not reaching healthy sleep targets. Experts advise against using the snooze alarm function, as the additional sleep gained after initial alarm sound is of poor quality.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School sourced data for this study from the smartphone application SleepCycle. Individuals (N=21,222; men, 54.2%) who used the application’s alarm clock function were evaluated for sleep trends and snooze alarm usage. The default snooze alarm setting is an additional 5 minutes. The start of sleep was defined as the time the user manually pressed the ‘start’ button and wake time was defined as the timing of the alarm. The researchers categorized participants as heavy, moderate, or light snooze alarm users based on the percentage of sleep sessions ending with a snooze alarm: over 80% for heavy users, 40%–60% for moderate users, and under 20% for light users.

Among the study sample, 43.6% resided in the United States, and they had data about an average of 142.2±21.4 sleep session.

The snooze alarm was used in 55.6% of sleep sessions and 45.2% of users were heavy snooze users.

The heavy snooze users had more erratic sleep and wake times, they used the snooze alarm multiple times each day, and they used the snooze function on most days.

In sleep sessions ending with a snooze alarm, the average snooze use was 2.4 times for 10.8 additional minutes of sleep, in which heavy snooze users pressed the snooze alarm an average of 4.0 times for an additional 20.2 minutes of sleep.

Snooze was used most frequently during the weekday (F, 26.5; P <.001) and least frequently used on Sunday. Among heavy, moderate, and light snooze alarm users, the snooze button was pressed 4, 1.7, and 1.2 times, and snooze sessions averaged 20.2, 6.3, and 3.0 minutes, respectively.

Women used the snooze alarm (mean snooze alarm sessions, 2.5; 95% CI, 2.5-2.6; mean daily snoozing time, 11.5 minutes) more than men (mean snooze alarm sessions, 2.3; 95% CI, 2.3-2.4; mean daily snoozing time, 10.2 minutes).

Stratified by country, the highest snooze use was observed in Sweden (mean snooze alarm sessions, 2.7), followed by Germany and the US (mean snooze alarm sessions, 2.5) whereas the lowest snooze use was observed in Japan and Australia (mean snooze alarm sessions, 2.2).

Stratified by season, use of the snooze function was highest in December (mean, 2.62 alarms) and lowest in September (mean, 2.40 alarms) in the Northern Hemisphere whereas for the Southern Hemisphere, July had the highest (mean, 2.35 alarms) and November the lowest (mean, 2.29 alarms) snooze use.

The most common sleep durations were 7 (33.4%) and 8 (25.5%) hours. Use of the snooze alarm depended on sleep duration (F, 7316.5; P <.001), in which it was used more with longer sleep than with shorter sleep.

Going to bed at a later time than usual was associated with increased snooze use.

This study was limited by defining sleep time by the push of a button rather than objective assessment and by the lack of sociodemographic information.

“We observe that use of snooze alarm is common, and averages 11 min per sleep session. Snooze alarm use was relatively stable, with a few small differences by day of the week and region. We observed that women utilize snooze alarms slightly more frequently than men, and longer sleep sessions were characterized by more snooze alarm use than healthy sleep duration and short sleep sessions (6 h or less),” the researchers concluded.

Disclosure: Some study authors declared affiliations with biotech, pharmaceutical, and/or device companies. Please see the original reference for a full list of authors’ disclosures.