Snooze alarm use in a global population of smartphone users

Snooze alarm use is a common, but poorly understood human behavior. We explore the prevalence and characteristics of snooze alarm use in more than 3 million nights collected in a global sample of users of a sleep monitoring smartphone application. On the nights that participants logged a sleep session, more than half (55.6%) of the sessions ended with a snooze alarm. Of the sleep sessions ending with snooze alarm, snooze alarm was pressed on average 2.4 times (95% CI: 2.4-2.5) and the average duration of snooze alarm use was 10.8 minutes (95% CI: 10.7-10.9). We observed significantly more snooze alarm use in women as compared to men. Long sleep sessions (> 9 h) were more likely to end with snooze alarm use than recommended duration (7 to 9 h) or short (< 7 h) sleep sessions. Sleepers who went to bed earlier used snooze alarm less, while those who went to bed later than usual used the snooze alarm more. Future research is needed to understand the impact of snooze alarm use on daytime performance.