we were a sleep-deprived nation wednesday. preliminary results from the wearable device company fitbit found that its u.s. users on average slept about 30 minutes less on election night than the prior two tuesday nights. that<u+2019>s a statistically significant difference, and especially large given that sleep data from the 10 million fibit users nationwide usually varies by a minute or two from night to night. wearable device companies had previously reported data showing that the election<u+2014> particularly debate nights <u+2014>resulted in americans losing sleep in statistically significant amounts. but those numbers paled in comparison to election night. on the night of the first presidential debate, for example, fitbit users nationwide slept an average of 4.2 minutes less than they did the monday before and the monday after the debate. the san francisco-based fitbit gets its data when users sync their trackers wirelessly to mobile devices or computers through an app that displays their personal stats. fitbit analyzes the aggregated data after removing identifying information. data from two other wearables companies also showed users losing statistically significant amounts of sleep on presidential debate nights. those who own wearable devices tend to skew younger and wealthier than likely voters. write to sumathi reddy at sumathi.reddy@wsj.com
you probably lost sleep on election night - wsj
sumathi reddy