Family Encyclopedia >> Health

Sleep insights and habits worldwide

A good night's sleep consists of long, uninterrupted sleep segments. Sleep tracking provides insight into individual patterns and baselines over time, allowing you to change your sleeping habits. Below are a number of insights based on 6 million nights analyzed by the Dutch and 27 other nationalities by Polar Sleep Plus:

* The average global sleep time is 7 hours 22 minutes, with Estonia sleeping the longest at 7 hours 36 minutes and Japan the least sleeping at 6 hours 33 minutes.

* Women around the world sleep longer and better than men, on average 7 hours and 35 minutes, 22 minutes longer than men.

* The age group that sleeps most soundly without interruptions are 18-29 year olds, who record an average of 7 hours of actual sleep time. The 40-64 year olds record the least sleep time worldwide at 6 hours and 50 minutes.

* Finns score highest on best sleep continuity with a score of 3.4 out of 5 (five represents very continuous sleep). China ranks last with a score of 2.7, which indicates quite fragmented sleep.

* Hong Kong and Spain are the night owls of the world, falling asleep at 0:52 am and 0:45 am respectively. South Africans go to bed the earliest at 10:45 PM. But they also wake up earliest at 6:06 AM.

Sleeping habits of the Dutch man and woman
On average, Dutch women go to sleep slightly earlier than men and sleep 21 minutes longer, sleeping 7 hours and 41 minutes instead of 7 hours and 20 minutes for men. In general, Dutch men wake up slightly earlier than women, at 7:19 a.m. and 7:26 a.m. respectively.

Dutch sleeping habits during weekdays and weekend days
During the week, the Dutch go to bed on average at 11:41 PM and wake up at 7:03 AM, with a total of 7 hours and 22 minutes of sleep time. On weekends, the Dutch sleep an average of 26 minutes more, bedtime moves up to 0:17 a.m. and the morning does not start earlier than 8:07 a.m.

Current sleep time and sleep continuity of the Dutchman
In general, the Dutch person experiences a fairly continuous night's sleep with an average of 3.2 out of 5 on the Polar continuity scale. On average, the Dutch person experiences 22.8 short interruptions during the night and 5.2 long interruptions. Although the average sleep time of the Dutch person is 7 hours and 3 minutes, if Polar takes the interruptions into account, the actual sleep time shifts to 6 hours and 59 minutes.