Sleep trackers promise to turn the mystery of the night into clean numbers and colorful charts. Yet as the devices have become more sophisticated and popular, sleep specialists are warning that the data can be far less reliable, and far more psychologically disruptive, than most users realize. The very gadgets marketed as a path to better rest can, in some cases, deepen anxiety, worsen insomnia, and distract from the basics that actually improve sleep.
I see the same pattern across smartwatches, rings, and bands: people treat nightly scores as medical verdicts instead of rough estimates. When that happens, small inaccuracies and algorithmic guesses can snowball into what clinicians now call “orthosomnia,” a fixation on perfect sleep that leaves people more exhausted than before.
Why your sleep tracker’s numbers are shakier than they look
At the core of the problem is how these devices work. Consumer trackers infer sleep from movement and heart rate, using an accelerometer and optical sensor data to guess when you are asleep and which stage you are in. That is very different from a clinical sleep study, which uses brain waves, eye movements, and breathing to label each stage. Even the most advanced wearables, from titanium rings like the Oura Ring to high-end smartwatches, are still making educated guesses about REM and deep sleep. Sleep psychiatrists stress that while these devices can highlight patterns, they are not designed to diagnose a sleep disorder or replace formal testing, and they urge users to keep expectations realistic when they look at their nightly breakdowns from platforms like While clinical services.
The market, however, is moving in the opposite direction, with more devices and more granular claims. Recent “best of” rundowns now compare smartwatches, rings, straps, and even biceps bands, as reviewers like Jan walk through a crowded field of wearables that all promise lab-like insight from your wrist or finger. Retail listings for each new product lean heavily on sleep-stage charts and readiness scores, even though the underlying algorithms are proprietary and rarely validated against full overnight studies. Another glossy product page might highlight “precision” deep-sleep tracking, but specialists consistently caution that stage-by-stage numbers are, at best, approximations.
When “better data” turns into orthosomnia and anxiety
The mismatch between marketing and reality would be a minor annoyance if it only meant a few wrong minutes of REM. Instead, it is reshaping how people feel about their nights. Millions of users now wake up and check a score before they check in with their own bodies, a habit that sleep experts say can fuel a new form of insomnia. Clinicians describe “orthosomnia” as a preoccupation with optimizing sleep metrics, a pattern that has been linked to Issues in which people trust their devices more than their own sense of rest. One of the most striking warnings comes from clinicians who note that orthosomnia can be driven by faulty data, with One of the key concerns being that users chase perfect scores that their bodies neither need nor can realistically achieve.
The human cost of that obsession is no longer hypothetical. One specialist described “real horror stories,” including a 27-year-old woman whose tracker insisted she was not sleeping at all, even though an overnight lab study showed normal patterns, a case that illustrates how a device can trigger a spiral of sleep anxiety and One form of insomnia. Branson, a sleep specialist at the Morehouse School of Medicine, has seen similar score-induced distress in her own patients, noting that some begin to worry about every small dip in their nightly readouts instead of focusing on how they actually feel when they wake up, a pattern she has linked to broader health concerns like the body’s ability to start fighting an Branson level infection.
For people already prone to sleeplessness, the risk is even higher. Mar and other Experts have warned that if you are vulnerable to insomnia, a tracker can make things worse by turning every night into a test you can fail. Separate reporting on U.S. sleep clinics has echoed that concern, with Experts describing patients who become fixated on their graphs and begin to doubt their own memories of having slept. I have heard similar caution from performance-focused coaches: in one widely shared video, Jul, also known as Dr. Andy Galpin, urged people to “stop worrying about your sleep score,” arguing that overattention to nightly numbers can backfire, a point he underscored in a detailed Jul breakdown of recovery metrics.
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