Lauren Goode

Recent Posts by Lauren Goode

Men Sleep Naked and Other Useful Stuff Jawbone Up Can Tell Us

Women sleep on their sides more often then men do, men are twice as likely to sleep naked, and most of us are guilty of bringing our mobile phones into the bedroom.

jawbone_up_feature

That’s according to Jawbone, the San Francisco-based maker of Bluetooth speakers and wearable technology. Jawbone surveyed a bunch of wearers of its Up wristband — which tracks sleep patterns, in addition to other things — and asked them for the less-snoozy details of their sleep habits.

One of the supposed benefits of these wearable devices is that, over time, the data shared can be used to provide deeper insight or more prescriptive solutions for how our bodies work. As I wrote in a column earlier this week about the Fitbit Force (a Jawbone Up competitor), all of this still feels very much like Activity Tracking 1.1, not quite Wearables 2.0. So it’s early days.

Jawbone has put together a bright-green infographic with its findings, but I’ll summarize some key points for you:

  • 80 percent of Up wearers sleep with a mobile phone in the bedroom.
  • Those with partners go to bed on average 35 minutes earlier than those who sleep alone.
  • The typical woman sleeps with two pillows, the typical man with one.
  • Women are three times as likely as men to sleep in socks.
  • Men like to sleep naked. See above.
  • Men are 19 percent more likely to browse the Internet after 5 pm.
  • And men are eight times more likely than women to have their beds made for them. Yes, really. You’d think while we were all busy leaning in and stuff that dudes would have learned the hospital tuck by now.

A couple of caveats here: First, the three sample sizes that Jawbone pulled from were relatively small, each ranging from 300 to 500 people.

And, these are all people who actively track their sleep using the Jawbone Up, but since the band or app isn’t going to track things like whether you’re wearing socks, this is all self-reported data. I’m not sure which I’d find more reliable — self-reported data or data gathered by the device itself.

To that point, the sleep-tracking capabilities of these kinds of wearable devices might be less than precise. Some experts are skeptical. Casey Johnson of Ars Technica put it well in her wearables comparison when she wrote that, as irresistible as the sleep-tracking wristbands are to her, “I will preface this … by saying that I’m aware of how fuzzy the science of sleep-logging done by a fitness-tracking band worn on your wrist must inherently be. Sleep logging, done right by scientists, is a pretty complicated thing.”

But it’s easy to see the potential usefulness of this sort of (opt-in) data if there’s more of it. In the infographic, Jawbone links nighttime Internet browsing with later bedtimes — not a shocking revelation, but something that sleep scientists have weighed in on, as well.

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »

There was a worry before I started this that I was going to burn every bridge I had. But I realize now that there are some bridges that are worth burning.

— Valleywag editor Sam Biddle