How Does Our Sleeping Habits Change Over The Pandemic?
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, people have been paying more attention to their health. A big part of that is sleep – something that modern city workers can agree are mostly lacking. Having a good sleep isn’t just about ensuring you’re not drowsy on the next day, it is important in maintaining your health as well. A good sleep improves both physical and cognitive health, and helps at ensuring a person can better perform tasks that requires long periods of concentration – such as driving, brainstorming and more.
Given the impact of the pandemic, it is worth exploring how our sleeping habits change as a result. Samsung Health has published the data on how the sleeping duration and efficiency change over time across the world since the start of the pandemic:
Sleep Duration vs Efficiency
The common thinking is that longer sleep equals better sleep quality. That is not entirely correct – the keyword you’re looking here is “efficiency”: meaning the time actually spent sleeping, versus the time trying to sleep. The less time you spent rolling on the bed, the more efficient your sleeps are. Samsung’s data has shown that despite people sleep longer post-COVID, there is no correlation between sleep duration and sleep efficiency. In fact, the efficiency decreased despite increase in sleep duration.
The data varied between gender and age too – with males seeing a larger increase in sleep duration over females, however the sleep efficiency dropped more than females as well. As far as age is concerned – everyone sleeps longer, but the efficiency decreased as the age group increases. The exception here is people between ages of 20 and 39 – who experienced an increase in sleep efficiency. Moreover, this particular age group was the ones that shows both increases in sleep duration and sleep efficiency.
How Did The Pandemic Change Sleeping Habits Across The World?
Samsung also looked into the data on 16 countries where users of Samsung Health registers their sleeping habits, to see how sleep varies between regions. While all countries observed saw an increase in sleep duration – with wake up times later than before – the sleeping efficiency contains mixed results.
The changes of sleeping habits from each region are as follows:
- Despite sleeping the longest, France saw a decrease in sleep efficiency post-pandemic.
- Korean users see one of the biggest jumps in sleep duration and efficiency post-COVID, however they still remain below global average.
- USA sees the biggest drop in sleep efficiency among all recorded regions.
- Germany, while being the highest in sleep efficiency before COVID, sees the biggest drop in sleep efficiency post-COVID.
- Argentina recorded the highest sleep efficiency post-pandemic.
- Vietnam now has the lowest sleeping efficiency, replacing the spot previously held by Indonesia.
- Indonesia saw the highest jump in sleep efficiency in this period – aside from that, the wake up times are delayed by 11 minutes, still the earliest among recorded regions.
- Mexico sees the biggest change in sleep times – with 11 minutes of change in bedtime and 17 minutes later in wake up time.
How You Can Improve the Sleeping Quality
It is widely believed that a human is best sleep for 8 hours a night. The results shows that sleep quality can be an important factor – and sleep tracking helps you understand your sleep patterns and helps you attain a better sleep at night.
According to Samsung, 50% of Galaxy Watch users keep track of their sleep at least once a week – among them, 40% do it thrice per week. To better manage your sleep, these tips may help you using the Galaxy Watch series and think about adopting some of them to make sure you have a restful sleep.
- Track your sleep pattern: Sleep Score details your sleep stages on when you enter deep sleep, REM sleep and the various sleep and wake-up times.
- Understand sleep quality better: Blood Oxygen monitoring and Snore Detection keeps you aware of your sleep quality and overall health.
- Try a sleep training program: Tailor-made Sleep Coaching can guide you dynamically based on your actual habits – represented by one of eight dedicated sleep symbol animals to help you understand and improve your sleep.
- Set up an ideal sleeping environment: Just as your sleep itself, your sleeping environment matters. Consider automatic temperature and lighting controls for the ideal sleeping conditions.
If you want an easier, more accurate way to track your health, especially sleep, the Samsung Galaxy Watch5 is a solid choice. Check out our review of it by clicking right here.