{"id":802984,"date":"2026-07-16T01:43:54","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T01:43:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/802984\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T01:43:54","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T01:43:54","slug":"your-smartwatch-might-be-making-your-sleep-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/802984\/","title":{"rendered":"Your smartwatch might be making your sleep worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"An<\/p>\n

An Apple Watch Series 11 is displayed at an Apple Store in September 2025. Wearables and sleep-tracking devices have grown increasingly popular, but sleep experts say some of the data they collect \u2014 including sleep scores and sleep-stage breakdowns \u2014 can be misleading.<\/p>\n

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The use of sleep tracking devices is exploding, with nearly half of U.S. adults saying they\u2019ve used a smartwatch, app or other device to monitor their sleep\u00a0\u2014 up from 35% in 2023, according to<\/a> the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The uptick is part of a growing interest in sleep among researchers<\/a> and the public, which is helping drive the recent \u201csleepmaxxing\u201d trend on social media.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The trend is especially visible in the Bay Area, whose tech-heavy, fitness-oriented population fits the national profile of consumers most likely to adopt<\/a> wearables like the Apple Watch, Garmin\u00a0watches and Oura ring to track sleep.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But not all of the data these devices collect is meaningful, sleep medicine experts said. And they add that people who use them obsessively\u00a0\u2014\u00a0including those who seek optimal sleep, driven by wearables data\u00a0\u2014\u00a0may be the least likely to benefit from them.<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s what the technology is most and least helpful for:<\/p>\n

What they\u2019re good at<\/p>\n

By tracking heart rate and other metrics, sleep trackers are fairly accurate at distinguishing between when you\u2019re awake and when you\u2019re asleep, and thus at estimating your overall sleep time, said Dr. Katherine Malcolm, a sleep medicine specialist at UCSF.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Some devices also claim to measure how much time you spend in each stage of sleep (light sleep, deep sleep and REM sleep). The technology is reasonably good at telling when you\u2019re in REM sleep because that stage of sleep tends to have more heart rate variability, which sensors pick up on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What they\u2019re not as good at<\/p>\n

But these devices are less reliable at measuring deep versus light sleep.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The only way to tell if someone is in deep sleep\u00a0\u2014 when the brain goes into slow synchronous activity\u00a0\u2014 is when they\u2019re in a lab study and their brain activity is being monitored by an electroencephalogram, or EEG, Malcolm said.<\/p>\n

Patients will sometimes use information from their trackers about how much time they\u2019re spending in each stage of sleep, and interpret it incorrectly, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cPeople are like, \u2018I had a bad night, I was in a lot of light sleep,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s an incorrect way to look at it. You should be spending a lot of time in light sleep. It\u2019s very important for your brain.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, the majority of the night, up to 55%, can be in light sleep, she said. Different things occur during the different stages of sleep\u00a0\u2014 including memory consolidation, the clearing out of proteins that are associated with Alzheimer\u2019s and hormone secretion\u00a0\u2014 and some functions take place over multiple stages. A person with a normal, healthy brain should have all stages in a good night\u2019s sleep, she said.<\/p>\n

Some devices also generate a \u201csleep score,\u201d and each company has its own \u201cblack box\u201d algorithm that comes up with that score, said Stanford sleep medicine specialist Dr. Rafael Pelayo.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A sleep score in and of itself is not objective or meaningful, experts said. They are not standardized the way, say, an oximeter reading is standardized across different brands, Pelayo said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it may be a useful tool to track changes over time\u00a0\u2014 the same way your bathroom scale can show changes in your weight over time, but only when compared to your previous weight on the same scale, Pelayo said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cA hotel scale might be slightly off, but if your own scale went up or down, you trust it more,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve had high scores for a while and it suddenly drops, you can look into what may have changed, such as a new mattress or a new medication, he said.<\/p>\n

Who should and shouldn\u2019t use them<\/p>\n

Wearable sleep devices are more helpful for some than others, and some people should probably avoid them altogether, experts said.<\/p>\n

If you drink alcohol some nights and not others, for instance, you may notice differences in sleep patterns that might compel you to drink less alcohol\u00a0\u2014 a known sleep disrupter that can cause fragmented sleep<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt might cause a behavioral change because you realize alcohol impacts your sleep,\u201d Malcolm said. \u201cThat\u2019s a helpful way to use a tracker.\u201d<\/p>\n

The people that get the least benefit from sleep trackers, she said, are people with insomnia or orthosomnia\u00a0\u2014 a relatively new term to describe someone with an unhealthy obsession with attaining \u201cperfect\u201d sleep.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see (orthosomnia) a lot in our clinic,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re tracking their sleep obsessively and bring me a huge data download and say, \u2018I feel fine during the day but I get a sleep score of 50 or 60.\u2019 This obsession with having perfect sleep, based on a wearable that\u2019s an imperfect measure of sleep, is a difficult way to use them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Malcolm also recommends people with insomnia not use sleep trackers because it stresses them out even more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone presents to me with insomnia and brings me their tracking device, I tell them to throw it away,\u201d she said. \u201cYou have to stop tracking your sleep. This is not a healthy behavior for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some devices like the Apple Watch can flag certain medical conditions like sleep apnea and atrial fibrillation with relative accuracy, Pelayo said, but they can\u2019t replace a formal medical diagnosis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re blurring the line between consumer electronics and medical devices,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Apple Watch Series 11 is displayed at an Apple Store in September 2025. Wearables and sleep-tracking devices…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":802985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,56495,485,137,500,1996,275261],"class_list":["post-802984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bay-area","tag-california","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-tech","tag-us-and-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/802985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}