At 6:30 in the morning, the alarm clock rings. You wake up suddenly from your dream and reach out to press "remind later". Nine minutes later, the bell rang again and you pressed it again. When it rings for the third time, you finally get up with difficulty, but your head feels dizzy and your limbs feel heavy, as if you are even more exhausted than if you got up straight away.
The snooze button of the mobile phone alarm clock’s “remind later” image source: Screenshot from the author’s mobile phone
Are you also involved in this "getting up tug of war" that happens every day?
Pressing the snooze button on the alarm clock has almost become one of the most common things for modern urbanites. According to an analysis of data covering three million nights around the world,More than half of people don’t get up immediately after the first alarm clock rings in the morning. Instead, they press it off repeatedly and struggle..
Why do we snooze? Is this compensating for the previous night's exhaustion, or is it compromising the brain's otherwise complete recovery process? What's more:What does this behavior mean for your cognitive state, mood, and brain function?
There is actually no unanimous conclusion in the scientific community: some studies have pointed out that snoozing can interrupt the most important repair period of the brain, and there is also experimental evidence that moderate snoozing may help wake up more smoothly. So,Those few times every morning before sleeping againSeveralminute,What impact will it have??
How common is snoozing behavior?
According to a large study published in Scientific Reports in May 2025,More than 55.6% of sleep records worldwide include snoozing behavior. The study, sponsored by a joint team from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, analyzed data from21,000+ usersof sleep data, tracking a total of approximately3 million nights.
research findingsEach time you press the snooze button, you can extend your stay in bed by an average of 11 minutes., while heavy snoozers use this feature more than 80% of the time in the morning, spending about20 minutesPulling back and forth between waking and sleeping in fits and starts. Each time snooze is not pressed only once, the userPressed an average of 2.4 times, equivalent toThe cycle of waking up and falling asleep every morning is at least two rounds..
Snooze behavior inWorking days increased significantly, especially on stressful days, it is more difficult for people to get up decisively. The investigation also found thatfemaleMore likely than men to use the snooze button,Sweden, Germany, United StatesIt is the country with the highest snooze rate.
Snooze alarm clock behavior is distributed by day of the week. A represents the average number of snooze alarm clock uses, and B represents the average snooze alarm clock usage time.
Even more interestingly, this study also discovered a counterintuitive phenomenon:Those who slept less than 5 hours a night were less likely to snooze. Researchers believe that this may be because such people usually face unshirkable responsibilities in the morning, such as taking care of children, catching the early bus, going out to work, etc., and there is no room for another sleep.
In contrast, those who slept more than 9 hours per nightMore likely to snooze before waking up, this may mean that they are in the stage of catching up on sleep, or that the body is going through some kind of recovery state, such as a repair response after a cold, fatigue, or psychological stress.
Opposition view
Snoozing may interrupt the brain's "golden repair period"
While a few extra minutes of sleep may sound like being gentle to yourself, according to many sleep experts, this habitMay be quietly eroding our most precious stage of sleep.
Dr. Rebecca Robbins, a sleep researcher from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and her team pointed out,The period when you are about to wake up in the morning is the most abundant period of rapid eye movement sleep (REM) in the entire night's sleep.. REM sleep is not only related to dreams, but also an important opportunity for emotional regulation, learning and memory integration, and neural connection remodeling.
However, every time you are forcibly awakened by the alarm clock and then quickly return to a light sleep state, this process will be interrupted and the brain willRetreat from high-quality repair period to inefficient light sleep.
The study also found thatRepeated snoozing behavior fragments sleep rhythms, disrupting the natural rhythm of melatonin and cortisol secretion, making it difficult for the brain to discern the true signal to wake up. Even if the body has woken up after getting up, the brain is still as sluggish and groggy as if it were wrapped in a quilt, and it takes longer to regain clear consciousness. Especially for those who are already sleep-deprived, the extra sleep brought by snoozing is of extremely poor quality and may even have the opposite effect.
From a neuroscientific perspective, this logic is not difficult to understand. The brain has four to six complete sleep cycles at night, each cycle containing non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM) and rapid eye movement sleep (REM) stages. Snooze interrupts not the whole night's sleep, but the most critical last paragraph, just like the climax of a movie is suddenly suspended, which naturally affects the ending experience.
Therefore, sleep experts generally recommend:
·Set your alarm for the latest time you have to wake up.
·Adhere to the strategy of starting as soon as the sound rings, allowing the brain to form a clear arousal rhythm.
·Try to use a wake-up device with gradually brightening lights or soft sounds to reduce the neurological impact of waking up in the morning.
Positive point of view
Moderate "snooze" may be more conducive to clearing the brain
While most sleep experts remain cautious about snoozing, a growing body of research is beginning to reexamine the complexity of the behavior. A study published in the Journal of Sleep Research by the team of Dr. Tina Sundelin, a sleep scientist at Stockholm University in Sweden, put forward a different view through laboratory testing for the first time:"Within a reasonable time frame, snoozing does not significantly impair cognition and may instead help people wake up more gently."
The research team recruited 31 severe snoozers and asked them to complete two wake-up modes: getting up immediately and snoozing for 30 minutes within a week, and monitored their brain waves, salivary cortisol, reaction time and subjective level of wakefulness. Results show snoozerOnly reduced sleep time by about 6 minutes in total, far lower than the serious sleep waste that people are generally worried about; in the snooze group, most peopleThere was no higher sleepiness score on waking up.; On multiple cognitive tasks,The snooze group performed slightly better or had no difference, refuting the common saying that "snooze reduces early morning efficiency".
More importantly, the study proposes an interesting mechanism hypothesis:Snoozing may help the brain transition from deep sleep to light sleep, thereby reducing the sluggishness caused by sleep inertia.
Set multiple alarm clocks when you wake up in the morning丨Picture source: Author's screenshot
It's like warming up before running, gradually allowing the nervous system to kick in through several stages of light arousal, rather than switching directly from a cold start to running at full power. Among some people,Snooze is a subjective "positive adjustment" mechanism, helps reduce mood swings and physical discomfort in the morning.
Of course, this does not mean that snoozing is harmless and suitable for everyone. Sundelin also clearly stated:The study sample is people who get enough sleep and control their snooze time within 30 minutes., if the sleep itself is insufficient, or the snooze time is too long, similar positive effects may not be obtained.
Summarize:
Snoozing is not simply laziness or failure of self-discipline. It is a complex sleep regulation behavior, which involves multiple interactions between the brain's arousal mechanism, emotion regulation and circadian rhythms. From the current research,If you get enough sleep and the snooze time does not exceed 30 minutes, moderate snooze may not be harmful and may even help you wake up more smoothly.. However, if you suffer from chronic sleep deprivation and frequent snooze, it may disrupt your circadian rhythm and worsen fatigue and cognitive inefficiency.
Rather than debating whether to sleep for five more minutes, what's more important is, did you sleep well enough last night? In an era of sleep deprivation,The best snooze strategy is actuallyLet yourself go to bed early and get enough sleep.