Sleep quality is yet another aspect of health that people are constantly encouraged to tweak, optimize, and quantify to improve their well-being. It’s no longer simply about trying to get to bed earlier; you can now strap gadgets to your wrists and put smartphones by your pillows to monitor everything from your time spent in bed to your sleeping respiratory rate.
As with many health ideas that are well intended, the perceived benefits of sleep trackers can actually have the opposite effect. Here are ways that your sleep tracker might be harming your well-being (and what to do about it.)
1. You’re Obsessed With (and Anxious About) Your Sleep-tracking Results
Relying on your sleep tracker can harm your health if you become obsessed with your sleep data “results.” Achieving anything other than what you believe to be a healthy amount of sleep can easily cause anxiety.
You’ve likely felt the pressure to attain the “perfect” number of hours of sleep each night. In reality, everyone requires different amounts of sleep to feel their best. Yet, using a sleep tracker can breed an obsession with trying to hit a very specific number of hours of sleep.
TheJournal of Clinical Sleep Medicineexplains that many people spend excessive time in bed attempting to increase the sleep duration recorded by your sleep tracker. This can actually backfire and contribute to insomnia, as anxiety around this “perfectionist quest” rises. If you’re finding yourself overly worrying about your sleep data results, consider taking a break from tracking your sleep.
2. You’re Dependent on Your Sleep Tracker
Being too reliant on anything can lead to a lack of self-sufficiency, and it’s no different when it comes to tracking your sleep. If you’re dependent on your tracker to tell you when and how long to stay in bed for, you likely won’t be able to fall asleep without it.
Having a dependency on your sleep tracker—whether that’s a dedicated monitoring device or smartphone app—can be detrimental to your overall well-being. To help wean off your dependency, take a look at ourtips to reduce smartphone use in bed and improve your sleep hygiene.
3. You’ve Lost Touch With Your Body’s Natural Signals
If you’ve identified yourself as being dependent on your sleep tracker, you’ve likely also lost touch with your body’s natural wake and sleep signals. You may no longer be able to determine how tired or alert you feel during the morning, daytime, and when bedtime approaches.
Your body’s circadian rhythms (its internal 24-hour clock) should be in charge here, but if you’ve lost touch with this thanks to your sleep tracker dependence, you may struggle to fall or stay asleep.
If you’re feeling out of sync, it might be worth looking into ways ofboosting your energy naturallythroughout the day to help regulate your circadian rhythm for a better night’s sleep.
4. Your Sleep-Tracking Device Is Interrupting Your Sleep
The irony of using sleep-tracking devices to monitor and attempt to improve your sleep is that they can actually disrupt your sleep. Among the key pieces of advice from experts including theSleep Foundationis that you shouldn’t keep devices in the bedroom, as they can interfere with both the quantity and quality of your sleep.
From stimulation caused by engaging with your sleep-tracking device before bed to your smartwatch’s sensors causing excess light in your room, using a sleep tracker can actually disrupt your sleep.
In addition to disruptive noises and sounds, think about whether you ever wake in the night and check your sleep-tracking device. Having devices in the bedroom is a temptation and easy distraction from sleep, and you should consider stopping using your sleep-tracking device if you’re waking often throughout the night.
5. You Have Underlying Health Issues That Are Being Missed
With so much significance put on our personal “responsibility” to get a good night’s sleep, you may blame your lifestyle factors for insomnia or other sleep disorders. It’s easy to become obsessed with sleep tracker data and blame your own habits or believe you’re not trying hard enough to obtain optimum sleep quality. However, you may have underlying health issues that are causing these problems but are being overlooked in favor of (not necessarily accurate) sleep tracker data.
It’s important to remember that sleep trackers are not medical devices; they’re regarded as lifestyle or entertainment devices. If you’re experiencing disrupted, low-quality sleep over a prolonged period of time, speak to your primary healthcare practitioner.
6. You’re Comparing Your Sleep Data to Others
Ah, the wonders of social media and being constantly connected. Comparison is the thief of joy and—in this case—the thief of your sleep.
Experiencing social pressure to achieve a certain sleep performance is clearly not healthy. If your bestie shows off their tracker that displays nine hours of sleep a night and they are practically glowing, you may feel inadequate if your sleep tracker is showing a six-hour sleep pattern with varying quality.
If you’re using a community-based sleep tracker app that encourages you to share your results with your friends, but you’re feeling worse for comparing, try a sleep tracker that is private instead.
7. You’re Overlooking Your Personal Sleep Requirements
Sleep-tracking devices and apps suggest that there is a perfect way to sleep, but this is both unrealistic and untrue. Even you and your closest family members or partner won’t have the same sleep requirements. Everyone is different, and no sleep tracker can tell you what your unique biology needs.
There is only so much personalization sleep trackers can offer, and few give accurate enough advice. Instead, try using a sleep journal orhealth journal appto manually monitor your sleep and identify your personal needs.
8. Your Sleep Tracking Is Impacting Your Interpersonal Relationships
If you’re dependent on (or addicted to) your sleep-tracking device, this could easily affect your personal relationships. There’s prioritizing your sleep and then there is obsessing about your sleep; the two should be distinguished, especially when it comes to affecting your relationships.
If you’re skipping out on important family time or relationship connections in favor of hitting your tracker-determined sleep goal, think about how you can prioritize both. It could be a simple case of adjusting your sleep schedule on your tracker to ensure your personal relationships are not being neglected.
9. Your Sleep Tracker Isn’t Doing Its Job
One crucial point to bear in mind about sleep tracking is that many sleep-tracking devices do not provide fully accurate results.John Hopkins Medicinereveals that most sleep trackers actually just guesstimate your sleep hours—including deep sleep, light sleep, and REM cycles.
This isn’t so much of an issue if you know to take your sleep data results with a pinch of salt. But, if you’re getting upset about your sleep data, know that it isn’t an accurate representation of your true sleep habits. If you’re concerned, speak to your doctor, who may be able to refer you to a medical sleep study to help identify sleep disorders.
Is Your Sleep Tracker Harming Your Well-Being?
While good quality sleep is important for your health, becoming obsessed, ruled by, or disrupted by sleep-tracking devices is counterproductive. There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to sleep quantity, and the accuracy of sleep-tracking devices is still up for debate.
If you’ve been using a sleep tracker for a while but are not seeing any improvement in your sleep quality (or it’s worsened), it could be time to take a break. The bottom line is that you should speak to your doctor if you’re worried about your sleep and health.
