Chasing Sleep in a Sea of Gadgets

Sleep trackers have become the bed buddies of millions of people. It starts with a notification that reads: “You slept for 7 hours and 42 minutes. Your REM sleep was below average. Your recovery score is 68. Resting Heart Rate — Average.” Before your feet touch the floor, your wrist has judged your night. For a generation obsessed with tracking everything, from steps and calories to screen time and productivity, sleep has become the newest performance metric.

Quantification of Sleep

This wave of sleep tracker obsession did not emerge in a vacuum. It’s a gradual shift from smartwatches to fitness bands and now rings. Agastya S Wilson, Founder of Café Takeover, Delhi says, “I use a sleep tracker personally. At first, I noticed a lot of people around me use their Apple watches to track sleep and steps, but then I shifted to a screenless band because I genuinely thought it was better for my productivity.”

For Agastya, the comfort of a screenless band is much less distracting. He quips, “My sleep has become much better because I’ve now been able to get a sense of where I’m lacking, and where I can improve my sleep habits.” He shares that the data encouraged him to make lifestyle changes, including using a sleep mask, experimenting to support deeper sleep and gradually moving his bedtime from after midnight to before 11 pm.

Gen Z and millennials have embraced wearable technology and gadgets with enthusiasm. Sleep metrics has become another tool for personal optimization. Today, the conversation has moved from “Did you sleep well?” to “What is your Sleep score?”

Dark Side of Sleep Scores

While fitness gadgets and sleep trackers contribute immensely to knowing one’s body better, it’s important to know when to hit the brakes. A growing phenomenon known as orthosomnia has emerged among individuals who become excessively preoccupied with achieving perfect sleep metrics.

Point being, instead of using data as a guide, they begin treating it as a report card. Agastya says, “I have never felt particularly anxious or stressed about my sleep scores, but there have been times when I have felt disappointed by the results.”

Yajas Sardana, a Software Engineer from Bengaluru shares his experience. He says, “I think there is a sort of dopamine attached to it.” Explaining that this dopamine-driven element makes users continuously tweak their habits while monitoring sleep. He shares that while he would not describe experiences of a bad sleep score as stressful, sleep tracking can create a subtle emotional attachment to daily scores. Sleep trackers are a fantastic tool to be leveraged and used with personal responsibility. Tracking sleep can’t be the primary focus of someone’s life, no matter how important sleep tends to be.

Finding the Balance

Used wisely, sleep trackers can encourage healthier habits, promote awareness and help individuals understand long-term sleep patterns. Yajas quips, “Sleep tracking is a tricky slope. Depending on where you stand mentally, it can lead to an unhealthy obsession.” However, People who are highly influenced by metrics may begin attaching too much importance to sleep and recovery scores.

Wake-Up Call

The biggest lesson from the sleep-tracking revolution is that while technology can tell us how we slept, it cannot fully tell us how we feel. Sleep scores and recovery metrics are useful guides, not verdicts. The real goal isn’t a perfect score — it’s waking up feeling rested, healthy and ready for the day ahead.