![]() ![]() “There’s just too many confounding variables. The app uses your phone’s microphone to identify sleep phases by listening to your movements in bed from up to ten inches away, filtering out any “non-sleep movement sounds,” like sirens outside or a baby crying. Sleep Cycle, one of the most popular sleep-tracking apps in the Apple App Store, promises to wake you during your “lightest” sleep phase. There are a ton of tracking apps that monitor your sleep, but most only track sound and movement: two small components of sleep. If you can’t sleep, the combination of these behaviors (or lack of them) affects you much more than the things sleep trackers can measure. The same way you brush your teeth so they don’t fall out, Grinman suggests you do the same things to keep your sleep healthy - don’t drink alcohol too close to bedtime, don’t use bright lights, and reserve your bed only for sleep. We’re talking about sleep hygiene,” Grinman says. “The trackers can help to some degree, but the most effective treatment for insomnia is cognitive behavioral therapy. But measuring each of these factors alone isn’t accurate enough to determine whether or not your sleep is “bad” or “good.” “Good” sleep, says Grinman, correlates with good habits. Even though they say they’re backed by sleep science, they’re not robustly accurate.” Grinman, like many who study sleep, says we track sleep through movement, sound, heart rate, breathing patterns (snoring), and measuring your actual brainwaves using an electroencephalogram (EEG). “A lot of these things are geared toward just the general consumer. “Everybody wants the do-it-yourself kind of thing,” he says. Lev Grinman, a New Jersey–based neurologist who studies sleep disorders, says that most smart sleep technology “isn’t necessarily what a sleep physician would use to gauge how well somebody is sleeping.” When you’re up late at night Googling “What to do when you can’t sleep,” you’ll likely come across lists of magical apps and devices that promise to help. It’s easy to self-diagnose and self-medicate bad sleep because, well, you know it when you feel it. But do we really need to send Alexa and IFTTT our anxiety-induced sleep graphs? There are countless products backed vaguely by “sleep scientists” that promise to knock you out more efficiently. And if you’re already struggling with sleeplessness, this kind of obsessive sleep-related anxiety doesn’t feel great.įrom sleep-tracking apps that record your snores to wearable, clunky, brainwave-sensing headbands that connect back to your other smart devices. ![]() Productivity-obsessed people are losing sleep researching the best sleep-tracking apps in the same way they research deep work or polyphasic sleep schedules - whatever it is we’re doing, we should optimize it to be the most productive. are vamping before bed, which has been proven to throw off your body’s internal clock (or circadian rhythm) that tells you when to feel sleepy and awake.īut even without the screens, sleeping smarter through the use of smart-home connected devices is all about making sleep hyperefficient - even if you risk improving what little sleep you’re getting by bogging it down with more screen time and gadgets. ![]() But it’s not just the teens - in 2017, the Sleep Foundation reported that 90 percent of people in the U.S. The New York Times coined the term vamping in 2014, referring to teens’ proclivity to binge on social media late at night. That’s why it’s so strange that smart sleep technology has made sleeping more connected and quantifiable than ever before. We’re supposed to log off and disconnect before bed. If you’re like me, you probably know that after a day of being extremely online, the rule for getting a good night’s sleep is hard and fast: no screens before bedtime. I spend my day glued to a laptop, squinting, often taking breaks only to walk around scrolling through Instagram and suffering bouts of distraction sickness. ![]()
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