When data keeps you up
Sleep is the latest metric of modern life. Now, wearables promise to quantify your nights in numbers, and they aren’t just informing, but qualifying rest. Yet, beyond what it offers, a glaring contradiction exists: the very tools meant to increase sleep productivity might be the reason for those restless nights.
According to the JMIR, about 19.3% use wearable devices to monitor sleep, averaging only 5.7 hours of sleep and slept an hour less compared to non-users, who managed 6.6 hours. In addition, it took roughly 13 minutes longer for people who used trackers to fall asleep. This measure to improve has led to a growing fixation on keeping healthy sleep scores, and it seems to be doing the opposite of its intended purpose.
When rest becomes performance
This disorder is called orthosomnia; it describes the restlessness that stems from the obsession with tracking scores, followed by the constant urge to check or improve them. A term coined by Sabra M. Abbott, a neurologist and sleep medicine expert at Northwestern Medicine, "It's based on the term 'orthorexia,' which is an unhealthy fixation with healthy eating." In drastic cases, this fixation amalgamates with nomophobia, the fear of separation from one’s phone or tracker. Research posulates an estimate of 50% users experience moderate symptoms of nomophobia, with 20% being diagnosed with severe and mild symptoms.
At first, the numbers seem encouraging, but when tracking turns into routine, the effect reverses. In clinical comparisons with polysomnography, Fitbit’s sensitivity for sleep topped 97.8%, but its specificity for wakefulness was at a low 19.8%, while Jawbone’s numbers reached 96% and 37%, respectively. The Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine states that fitness trackers like Fitbit and Jawbone devices “overestimated total sleep time and sleep efficiency and underestimated wake time after sleep onset.” The aspiration of perfect rest, it seems, may be the very thing keeping people awake.
Not all outcomes condemn the trend
The numbers tell a story of curiosity turned into compulsion. Over one-third of Americans now rely on sleep trackers, looking for higher scores in the hope of deeper rest. But perception bends easily; users are stuck in a loop of digital reassurance and self-doubt. As Dr John Winkelman, chief of the Sleep Disorders Clinical Research Program at Harvard, cautions, "Many people still don't respect the importance of sleep, but using sleep trackers feeds into some people's anxieties. Anxiety and psychological arousal are the opposite of what we need when we sleep.”
The obsession over sleep score isn’t all downsides. For some, tracking allows them to build awareness, like fixing bedtimes or cutting caffeine. But over time, the same vigilance can backfire. Rest tracking offers clarity, yet the irony is, numbers only show how restless self-improvement can be.