It’s not a surprise that many people want to learn about their sleep and rely on sleep apps to help. What is surprising? Most of these apps are pretty useless and don’t actually teach users much about sleep at all.
A new study conducted by the University of Illinois analyzed 35 popular sleep apps and found that the majority of them are not helpful to users. Most apps fail to provide people with key information about the importance of sleep and the factors that negatively affect it.
According to Thrive Global, “Fewer than 15 percent of the apps provided any information about how sleep and sleep deprivation affect our health.” If people are not informed of the importance of sleep, they will not be motivated to change their sleeping patterns. What’s more, they may not know how to. Think about it, what’s the point of knowing the hours you slept if you don’t know the correct amount of hours you actually need and how to achieve that?
Sleeping apps are only useful when they teach users how to change their sleeping patterns. Unlike the majority of sleep Apps, Eight’s sleep app, which pairs with the Eight Sleep Tracker, can actually help you improve your sleep.
There is a Sleep Lab section on the Eight app where you can perform a sleep experiment for a week. Eight analyzes data to tell you how many hours of sleep you need in order to be properly rested. The results of this experiment become your sleep score goal, the score you aim for every night.
The Eight app is personalized to you. By comparing factors, like exercise and temperature, to your nightly sleep data, you’ll know what affects your sleep most and how to sleep optimally. The Eight app also takes into account how drinking alcohol and caffeine affect your sleep so you know what specifically to change in your daily routine to sleep better.
Sleep takes up about one third of our lives, and the Eight app lets users make the most of it. Learn more about how it works with the Sleep Tracker here.
