Yes and no. Depends on what you use it for. Yes they can help, but no they don’t do all that they say they do.
They can be helpful to help make you aware of some poor sleep habits, i.e. a late bed time or a lot of movement. The apps may be able to identify and make known to you if there is snoring or lots of movement going on, these can be signs of a sleep disorder. These apps can also be harmful, with people stressing about the amount of sleep and their scores from these app, this can actually make their sleep worse.
It is a positive thing that people are taking an interest in their sleep. However we need to be careful and to take the information shown in these apps with a grain of salt. These apps often use two types of inputs; sound and movement (actigraphy). Neither of these inputs can actually identify the type of sleep a person is getting. Deep sleep and dream sleep states are very important to us, however we need to consider that this technology will not be able to identify either of these. “Waking you from deep sleep” or “give you more deep sleep” is not an ability of these devices.
The apps do actually work in some ways. For people who have trouble sleeping, doctors recommend that they keep sleep diaries, and apps are a good way to do that. While it is important to be aware of our sleep quality and habits, we shouldn’t obsess over how much “deep sleep” the apps say we are getting.
Of course, if you feel you may have a sleep disorder or are in anyway concerned about the quality of your sleep, please consider talking to you doctor about this.
Original article: https://www.inverse.com/article/29218-do-sleep-apps-work
