A Wall Street Journal (WSJ) analysis of new data from the Jawbone digitized wristband concluded that people in Melbourne, Australia, sleep the most while citizens in Tokyo sleep the least.
The article by the WSJ’s Stuart Thompson reveals that different cities and their requisite lifestyles contributed heavily to the amount of slumber. “Since it isn’t a representative sample, it should be considered a reflection of how UP users sleep rather than the general population,” writes Thompson. “Computerized wristbands have plenty of critics who say the technology can be unreliable. Jawbone also relies on users clicking a button to indicate when they fall asleep and wake up, which can’t match the reliability of smaller lab studies that use electrodes.”
Focusing on just one month (June 2013), data analysis revealed a stark difference in how people sleep and move. Users in metropolitan areas like New York have a grid-like routine: they get up early on weekdays, move a little during the day, and sleep in more on weekends. “They also go to bed later each weekday and go to sleep earliest on Sundays,” writes Thompson. “When you combine data on how many steps they take each day, the trend is even starker. Contrast that graph with users in Orlando or Beijing, where there’s a less distinction between how users sleep on weekends and weekdays.”
Users in Melbourne, Australia got the most sleep on the list with an average of 7 hours and 5 minutes per night, followed by a mix of cities in Europe and the U.S. While these cities got the most sleep overall, almost all cities on the list got less than the 7 hours recommended by the Centers for Disease Control. Americans
In their own study of American sleep patterns, the CDC found the 35.3% got fewer than 7 hours.
At the bottom of the list was Tokyo, Japan, where users slept for just 5 hours and 46 minutes per night on average. Among American cities in the dataset, users in San Antonio, Texas, got the least amount of sleep with just 6 hours 40 minutes per night.