{"id":567013,"date":"2026-04-06T01:49:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T01:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/567013\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T01:49:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T01:49:13","slug":"health-often-comes-down-to-sleep-i-investigated-the-worst-morning-habit-of-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/567013\/","title":{"rendered":"Health often comes down to sleep. I investigated the worst morning habit of all."},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for the Slatest<\/a> to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.<\/p>\n

Just about every morning, right after I curse my alarm clock\u2019s existence, my thoughts turn from anger to something like admiration. As a feat of design, the clock radio has got to be one of the 20th century\u2019s indisputable triumphs: I can never get over how brilliant it is that the broad, easily accessible snooze button was made with half-asleep fumbling in mind, how it literalizes a trade-off you\u2019re making for a little more shut-eye. \u201cIt is the phrase \u2018just a few more minutes\u2019 rendered in plastic\u201d: That\u2019s how the website the Verge put it when snooze was its \u201cbutton of the month\u201d<\/a> a few years ago. Compare the low lift of hitting snooze to the fully awake effort and finger dexterity it takes to switch off an alarm. These are the kind of tactile realities that have kept me loyal to my early-2000s Sony Dream Machine<\/a>, even as most people seem to have abandoned the humble clock radio. Snoozing on a smartphone, some of which have a default setting of allowing only three snoozes, just isn\u2019t the same.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a born snoozer. I snooze at levels most people couldn\u2019t dream of (because they\u2019re awake, unlike me). After 20 or so years of use, some back-of-the-envelope math tells me that I\u2019ve probably hit my alarm clock\u2019s snooze button somewhere on the order of 10,000 times.<\/p>\n

More often than I\u2019d like to admit, I\u2019m hitting that button more than once or twice, sometimes a lot more. Though I\u2019ve always known my sleep habits could stand to be healthier, I never considered it a real problem until recently, because of the confluence of a few factors: For a lot of people like me with work-from-home-friendly jobs, the pandemic and the rise of remote work made it possible to push our sleep schedules ever later by enabling us to get out of bed mere minutes before the start of the workday. This started to become especially untenable a couple of years ago when I moved in with my now-fianc\u00e9. Though he claims not to be bothered by my obnoxious snoozing habits, I know that if I lived with someone like me, I would consider it torture, and I figure I ought to put some daylight between our mornings and anything that requires parsing how the Geneva Convention defines cruel and unusual.<\/p>\n

\n Is it possible the problem isn\u2019t snoozing but \u2026 judging myself for\u00a0snoozing?\n<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve long had the vague sense that snoozing was bad for me, too, but I had never gone beyond that or dug into why. I decided to start there. And indeed, that snoozing is \u201cbad for you\u201d does seem to be a common refrain among people who study sleep.<\/p>\n

Snoozing is thought to disrupt REM sleep, which is the sleep you need to be well-rested. Even though it feels like you\u2019re getting more rest if you fall back asleep, post-snooze sleep tends to be lower quality and leave you groggy and in a worse mood. There is widespread agreement that instead of snoozing, the best thing to do is to set your alarm for when you actually need to wake up.<\/p>\n

This is all well and good, but to me, this advice feels akin to telling someone that the best financial move is to make a lot of money. Well, duh. Of course you should get a full night\u2019s sleep. Of course you should, instead of snoozing in the morning, get out of bed and be a productive member of society. This advice fails to address why most people snooze. What it makes me think of is the show The Bear, specifically a line Ebon Moss-Bachrach\u2019s Richie once used to explain his difficult personality: \u201cI\u2019m not like this because I\u2019m in Van Halen. I\u2019m in Van Halen because I\u2019m like this.\u201d I\u2019m not like this because I snooze. I snooze because I\u2019m like this.<\/p>\n

Short of a full personality transplant, I don\u2019t see myself giving up all the bad habits I\u2019ve cultivated over the years that go hand in hand with snoozing. But maybe that\u2019s just what someone who\u2019s constantly fiending for a few more minutes of sleep would say. Apparently, we\u2019re legion. \u00a0A 2025 analysis<\/a> of data from the app Sleep Cycle by researchers at Mass General Brigham looked at the habits of 21,000 users, and it was summarized like this:<\/p>\n

Of the 3 million sleep sessions studied, 56% ended with a person using snoozing the alarm in the morning. The snooze button was pressed on average two and a half times, and people spent an average of 11 minutes snoozing between alarms, the authors note.<\/p>\n

Hitting snooze 2.5 times, for a total of 11 minutes? That doesn\u2019t even make sense until you realize that Sleep Cycle\u2019s default snooze time is an absurd five minutes. The standard length of a snooze is usually more like nine minutes, which is an amount of time that is thought to have its origins in the earliest snooze buttons back in the 1950s, which \u201chad to be worked in around the existing gearing of a small alarm clock,\u201d and therefore had to be less than 10 minutes<\/a>. Nine minutes remains what Mashable once called a \u201cnostalgic artificial standard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other studies, like a 2017 one<\/a> from the consumer electronics company Withings, have found that about 35 percent of people hit the snooze button once or twice, 15 percent hit snooze three-plus times, and the rest claim not to snooze at all. I am most interested in that 15 percent of people who own up to being snooze abusers like myself. Some studies classify these people as \u201cheavy snoozers,\u201d though it wasn\u2019t hard to earn this distinction in the 2025 study, which classified the 45 percent of people who snooze 80 percent of the time this way.<\/p>\n

To my relief, I discovered there\u2019s another side to all of this, a side that argues maybe snoozing isn\u2019t actually so bad. A widely covered 2023 study<\/a> from Stockholm University went so far as to say snoozing might actually be good for you, because it allows for a more gentle transition from sleep to waking. Some researchers think this mode of getting up might be especially beneficial to people who are natural night owls, a group in which I would certainly include myself.<\/p>\n

It all reminds me of the constant, confusing stream of headlines about whether drinking alcohol is actually bad for you, a topic that Tim Requarth wrote about extensively in a 2023 Slate article<\/a>. His conclusion was that while alcohol might not be that bad in moderation, it was pretty hard to make the wishful-thinking argument that it was good. It feels like a similar common-sense paradigm might apply with snoozing.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Melinda Wenner Moyer
\n It\u2019s an Embarrassing Habit That Makes People Worry About Your Marriage. You Should Try It Anyway.
\n Read More\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

When I finally spoke to someone directly about this, I was pleased to see that she didn\u2019t automatically take a hard-line stance against snoozing. \u201cGenerally speaking, we recommend getting all of the sleep you need in one uninterrupted period,\u201d said Anita Shelgikar, the president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and a professor of sleep medicine and neurology at the University of Michigan. \u201cThat being said, many people snooze, and for some people, they may find it a way to kind of ramp up to being fully awake and not feeling groggy when they get out of bed.\u201d (Since Shelgikar is an expert in the field, I was curious about her personal snoozing habits, and she told me she tries not to snooze but ends up doing it occasionally, especially when she has to deviate from her usual schedule.)<\/p>\n

I admitted to her how guilty I often feel about my excessive snoozing. \u201cI find your use of the word ashamed to be really interesting,\u201d she said. \u201cYou know, people have so much expectation around what their sleep is supposed to be, what it should be, maybe perceived judgment, either from themselves or from other people about whether their habits are good or bad. I wouldn\u2019t admonish somebody for snoozing once or three times, but more, I think it\u2019s important to explore the why behind it, and what are the factors leading to that routine.\u201d Is it possible the problem isn\u2019t snoozing but \u2026 judging myself for snoozing?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I Thought My Worst Habit in the Morning Was Probably Ruining My Life. When I Investigated, I Found Something Else.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Our Culture of Excess and Distraction Is Making Us Sick. But I\u2019ve Found a Cure, and It\u2019s Delicious.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Since I started working on this piece, I\u2019ve been trying to reform my relationship with my alarm clock. That included simply trying not to snooze for a week, which went semi-disastrously. Who would have predicted that if you\u2019re still tired when you wake up and you\u2019re used to snoozing, turning your alarm off right when you wake up might lead to falling straight back to sleep and dozing through the beginning of your first obligation of the day?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still working on it. When I told Shelgikar that sometimes I simply don\u2019t want to go to sleep at night, she said she actually hears that a lot. \u201cI think you are not alone in that at all. I think there are plenty of adults who do that. It\u2019s pretty astonishing, the number of people who do snooze and the number of people I encounter who feel like they just have to squeeze so much into their day.\u201d I may be no closer to quitting or even snoozing less, but I\u2019ll be thinking about all of us, this whole weary mass of humanity, next time I request nine more minutes of rest from the sleep gods. And then in all likelihood again nine minutes later, when I hit it for the second time.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sign up for Slate’s evening newsletter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[97,686,1728,8115],"class_list":{"0":"post-567013","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-medicine","10":"tag-research","11":"tag-sleep"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}