People worldwide have been waking up an hour later than normal during the coronavirus pandemic.
Data collected from 100,000 users of a sleep-tracking app, Sleep as Android, from countries around the globe provides a snapshot of how sleeping patterns have shifted. Users toggle the app on and off as they go to bed and wake up.
The data was analysed by Jeff Huang at Brown University, Rhode Island. On the first two Tuesdays of April 2019, around 50 per cent of the app鈥檚 users . On the first two Tuesdays of April 2020, roughly two-thirds woke up after that time.
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鈥淚鈥檝e often been thinking a lot about sleep data, behaviour data and what it can be signals for in other areas,鈥� says Huang, who has based on data collected by the app. The latest findings have yet to be published.
鈥淎ll the countries have some sort of reaction to covid in terms of people waking up quite a bit later,鈥� says Huang. In the US, users woke up around 50 minutes later than during pre-pandemic times 鈥� although this has now dropped to around 30 minutes later than normal. In China, the data shows people woke up almost 2 hours later in the early days of the epidemic there.
鈥淵ou can also see that dropping off as people go back into a regular routine, and it goes back up again when the cases become more serious,鈥� Huang says. 鈥淚 think it鈥檚 a reflection of how people change their behaviour because of covid.鈥�
Countries that have successfully tackled the spread of the coronavirus, such as New Zealand and Australia, are now almost back to pre-pandemic sleep times. Japan, which saw little change to everyday life, also saw no change in sleep patterns.
鈥淲hat this really looks like to me is people finally getting the opportunity to sleep for as long as they need, which turns out to be roughly 1 hour longer than they got in the pre-covid times,鈥� says Malcolm von Schantz at the University of Surrey, UK. Huang didn鈥檛 find a significant change in the time people went to bed, suggesting they were indeed sleeping longer.
Changes to working habits also probably had an effect, says Greg Elder at Northumbria University, UK. 鈥淔ewer people are having to work from the office and therefore commute, and social factors like that are an important determinant for sleep time,鈥� he says. Data collected by the UK Office for National Statistics shows that adults worked exclusively from home in June.
Elder and von Schantz caution that the findings don鈥檛 explore quality of sleep, which could be affected by anxiety.
Huang plans to keep monitoring the data to see how the roll-out of vaccines and the subsequent gradual return to normality affects sleeping patterns.
