You can take sleep too seriously
Written by people who build a sleep tracker, which is exactly why it needs saying.
Sleep tracking can make sleep worse. The pattern has a name — orthosomnia, coined in 2017 in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine — and describes people whose preoccupation with sleep data becomes the sleep problem. A 2024 study of 523 people found it in 3.0% of a general population sample, while 35.8% used sleep trackers regularly. If checking your score has become part of your bedtime routine, the number has stopped working for you.
In 2017, sleep researchers at Rush University described a group of patients arriving at their clinic with an unusual complaint. They were not primarily reporting how they felt. They were reporting what their sleep tracker had told them — and asking for help fixing the numbers.
The researchers gave it a name: orthosomnia. From ortho, correct, and somnia, sleep. The pursuit of perfect sleep, to the point where the pursuit itself is the problem.
People were not sleeping badly and then checking the app. They were checking the app and then deciding they had slept badly.
We build a sleep tracker. It would be more comfortable not to bring this up. But a company that sells you a number has an obligation to tell you when the number stops being useful — and there is now enough research that pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
The evidence
How common is it, really?
A cross-sectional study of 523 people, published in Brain Sciences in 2024, put orthosomnia at 3.0% of a general population sample. In the same group, 35.8% regularly used sleep-tracking devices.
Two things follow from that pair of numbers. First, this is a minority phenomenon — most people who track their sleep are fine. Anyone claiming trackers are broadly harmful is overstating it. Second, 3% of a general population is not nothing, and it is concentrated precisely among the people most likely to be reading an article about sleep tracking.
The field has taken it seriously enough to build measurement instruments: a screening questionnaire has been meta-analysed for reliability, and in 2025 a dedicated scale was published. That is what a phenomenon looks like when it stops being an anecdote.
The mechanism
Why a number can keep you awake
Insomnia is maintained less by the original trigger than by what grows around it: anxiety about sleeping, effort to fall asleep, monitoring whether it is working. This is standard in cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia, and it is why the therapy targets the worry rather than the sleep.
A nightly score can slot straight into that loop. It gives the anxiety something to check, a verdict to await, and a target to try harder at — and trying harder to sleep is the one thing guaranteed not to work.
The tracker is not doing anything to your body. The relationship you build with the number is what matters, and that relationship can be healthy or not.
Practical
A test, and permission
The test: in the morning, do you check the score before you notice how you feel? If the number arrives first and your sense of the night forms around it, the tracking has inverted. You are no longer measuring your sleep — the measurement is telling you how to feel about it.
The permission: tracking is a tool for answering a question. Do I snore? Does alcohol really cost me that much deep sleep? Is my schedule drifting later? Those are good questions, and a few weeks of data answers them properly.
Once you have the answer, you are allowed to stop. Close the app. Act on what you learned. Come back when you have a new question. We would genuinely rather you used SleepTrace for three weeks, learned something specific, and left, than opened it every morning for a year out of habit.
That is also why our recommendations point at one concrete thing to change tonight rather than at the score. A score invites comparison with yesterday. A change invites an experiment.
The other side
Where this argument is wrong
A fair objection: for many people, tracking is the thing that finally makes sleep concrete. Someone who has been told for years that they snore, who suddenly hears the recording, is not being made anxious — they are being handed evidence they can act on. Undiagnosed sleep apnea is far more common and far more consequential than orthosomnia.
So this is not an argument against tracking. It is an argument against treating the output as a grade. The 3% figure means 97% of the time, the honest advice is: track, learn, act.
We just think the company selling the tracker should be the one telling you where the line is.
Common questions
Orthosomnia, answered
Orthosomnia is an unhealthy preoccupation with achieving perfect sleep, often driven by sleep-tracking data. The term was coined in 2017 by Baron and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, who described patients seeking treatment for sleep problems they had identified primarily through their trackers. It is not a formal diagnosis, but it is a recognised pattern with a growing research literature behind it.
A 2024 cross-sectional study of 523 people published in Brain Sciences estimated orthosomnia in 3.0% of a general population sample, while 35.8% of participants regularly used sleep-tracking devices. So it affects a minority — but a real one, concentrated among the people most likely to be reading about sleep tracking in the first place.
It can, if checking the score becomes part of the bedtime routine. Anxiety about sleep is one of the mechanisms that keeps insomnia going, and a nightly number that can disappoint you feeds exactly that. The tracker itself does not harm sleep; the relationship you build with the number can.
Not necessarily. Tracking is useful when it answers a specific question — do I snore, does alcohol wreck my deep sleep, is my schedule drifting — and stops being useful when it becomes a nightly verdict on how you are doing. A practical test: if you check the score before you feel how you slept, the number has taken over. Then take a break from it.
We say this out loud, on our own site, which is unusual for a sleep-tracking company. Our recommendations point at one specific, testable change rather than at the score, and the app is designed to be used when you have a question, not compulsively. We would rather you use it for three weeks, learn something, and stop, than open it every morning for a year out of anxiety.
SleepTrace is a wellness app and does not diagnose, treat or prevent any condition. If sleep anxiety is affecting your daily life, speak to a doctor — cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia is effective and widely available.
Sources
References
- Baron KG, Abbott S, Jao N, Manalo N, Mullen R. Orthosomnia: are some patients taking the quantified self too far?. J Clin Sleep Med (2017). Europe PMC
- Jahrami H, Trabelsi K, Husain W, et al. Prevalence of orthosomnia in a general population sample: a cross-sectional study. Brain Sci (2024). Europe PMC