Is Hitting the Snooze Button Bad for You? What Research Says

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Is Hitting the Snooze Button Bad for You?

For most healthy adults, hitting the snooze button now and then is probably not harmful. The best current evidence, a 2023 sleep-lab study from Stockholm University, found that about 30 minutes of snoozing did not cut total sleep, did not disturb stress hormones and did not worsen mood. What snoozing does reveal, if it happens every morning, is that you may not be getting enough sleep or that your alarm is fighting your body clock. That is the part worth fixing.

The older warning, popular in the 2010s, was that snoozing chops up light sleep, robs you of valuable dream sleep and leaves you groggy all day. Some of that reasoning holds up and some does not. Here is what is known about the snooze habit, why mornings feel so hard, and practical ways to wake up better.

From a 4 a.m. bell to the nine-minute snooze

The American clockmaker Levi Hutchins is often credited with building the first mechanical alarm clock in the United States, in Concord, New Hampshire, in 1787. It had one fixed setting: a bell rang at 4 a.m., the time Hutchins wanted to rise. Adjustable alarms came later in the nineteenth century.

The snooze button arrived in the mid-twentieth century, when clock makers such as Westclox advertised alarm clocks with a short repeat alarm. Many still use a gap of about nine minutes, which became an industry habit. Today almost every phone has a snooze option built in, and surveys suggest it is heavily used: data from activity trackers and polls of workers in 2017 and 2022 found that roughly half of people press snooze at least once on a typical morning.

Why waking up feels so hard

Sleep runs in cycles of roughly 90 minutes. Each cycle moves through lighter non-REM sleep, deep slow-wave sleep and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, the stage most strongly linked to vivid dreams. Early in the night, deep sleep dominates. Towards morning, REM periods get longer.

What The Biology Of Sleep Tells Us

This pair of brain scans compares activity during non-REM sleep (left) with REM sleep (right). Warmer colours mark more active regions. During REM, large parts of the brain are almost as busy as when we are awake, which helps explain why being pulled out of REM by an alarm can feel so disorienting.

Your body also prepares to wake before you open your eyes. Body temperature starts to rise and levels of the hormone cortisol climb sharply in the first half-hour after waking, a pattern called the cortisol awakening response. When an alarm cuts in at the wrong moment, especially during deep sleep, you may experience sleep inertia: grogginess, slower thinking and low mood that usually fades within 15 to 30 minutes, but can last longer if you are sleep-deprived.

The case against snoozing

Critics of the snooze button make three main arguments:

  • Fragmented sleep. Light dozing interrupted every nine minutes is poorer sleep than an unbroken stretch, so those minutes do little to restore you.
  • Lost REM. Because REM is concentrated in the last hours of the night, repeated alarms could cut into it. REM sleep is involved in memory, learning and emotional processing.
  • A sign of sleep debt. People who hit snooze several times every morning are often simply not sleeping enough, and the snooze button hides the problem rather than solving it.

The third point is the strongest. Chronic short sleep is linked to poorer concentration, mood problems and higher risk of several health conditions. If you need multiple snoozes every day, the alarm is not the real issue.

What the 2023 snooze study found

Researchers led by Tina Sundelin at Stockholm University put the snooze button to a proper test, publishing their results in the Journal of Sleep Research under the title "Is snoozing losing?".

First they surveyed 1,732 adults, most of them in Sweden. Around 69 percent used snooze or several alarms at least sometimes. Snoozers tended to be younger, much more often "night owls", and slept less on workdays. Their main reason was simply feeling too tired to get up.

Next, 31 habitual snoozers slept in a sleep laboratory. On one morning they got up at their usual time with no snooze; on another, the alarm went off 30 minutes earlier and they snoozed every nine to ten minutes. The results:

  • Total sleep was about the same either way, though sleep during the snooze period was lighter and more broken.
  • Snoozing had no effect on the morning cortisol rise or on mood and sleepiness through the morning.
  • Right after getting up, snoozers did slightly better on some thinking tests, perhaps because they were already partly awake.

The authors concluded that snoozing is likely not harmful for people who sleep enough beforehand. They also noted the limits: a small group, one morning each and only one snooze pattern. Long-term effects, and the effects on people who are short of sleep, remain open questions.

How to wake up more easily

  • Protect your sleep window. Most adults need seven or more hours. Work backwards from your alarm and set a realistic bedtime.
  • Keep the same schedule every day. Regular sleep and wake times, including weekends, train your circadian rhythm so you start waking just before the alarm.
  • Set the alarm for when you really get up. If you always snooze for 30 minutes, an alarm set for the later time gives you one solid half-hour of sleep instead of three broken ones.
  • If you do snooze, cap it. One snooze is a reasonable compromise; a long chain of them mostly signals a short night.
  • Put the alarm across the room. Having to stand up breaks the reflex.
  • Get light early. Daylight or bright light soon after waking helps reset your body clock and lifts grogginess.
  • Watch late caffeine, alcohol and screens, which can push bedtime later or make sleep lighter.

When to talk to a doctor

Struggling to wake now and then is normal. If you sleep seven to nine hours and still wake exhausted, snore loudly, stop breathing in your sleep, or feel sleepy enough to nod off while driving, talk to a doctor. Conditions such as sleep apnoea, thyroid problems and depression can all show up as constant morning tiredness.

The snooze button, in other words, is less a villain than a messenger. Listen to what it says about your sleep, and your mornings will usually take care of themselves.

How do you get yourself out of bed? Share your best tips in the comments.

Sources: Original reporting via Collective Evolution, which drew on Sophia Breene at Greatist. Research: PsyPost on Sundelin, Landry and Axelsson (2023), Journal of Sleep Research; Wikipedia, Levi Hutchins.

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