Snoozing past an alarm seemed to have no noticeable effects on sleep quality, and it might even help some people wake up more alert.
Hitting the snooze button on your wake-up alarm might just be fine, new research out this week suggests. In a pair of studies, scientists found evidence that a majority of people regularly hit snooze and that the habit doesn’t seem to noticeably harm our sleep. It could even help make some people more alert in the morning.
The research was conducted by scientists from Sweden and Australia, led by Tina Sundelin, a psychologist and sleep researcher at Stockholm University. Sundelin has at times been an avid snoozer. And like many people, she had long heard about the supposed negative health effects of snoozing. But when Sundelin looked deeper, she couldn’t find any real data to back this claim up.
“As a sleep researcher, I tried to find the evidence behind this and couldn’t find a single study,” she told Gizmodo in an email.
To better understand snoozing, she and her colleagues decided to conduct two studies. In the first, they polled over 1,700 people online about their sleep habits. 69% of respondents reported using the snooze button on their alarm or setting multiple alarms at least some of the time. Snoozers were generally younger than nonsnoozers and more likely to be night owls.
