Researchers at Mass General Brigham analyzed more than 3 million real sleep sessions and found that 55.6% of them — more than half — ended with at least one snooze. The average snoozer hit the button about 2.4 times and spent roughly 11 minutes bouncing between alarms before actually getting up.
If that's you most mornings, you're not weak-willed. You're the majority. But the study also found something worth knowing before you hit snooze tomorrow: those 11 minutes probably aren't doing what you think they're doing.
What's Actually Happening in Those "Extra" Minutes
Sleep unfolds in cycles — light sleep, deep sleep, then REM, in that order, over roughly 90 minutes. The hours right before your alarm normally goes off are especially rich in REM sleep, the stage tied to memory and mood.
When you snooze, you interrupt that cycle and then try to restart it with nowhere near enough time to complete it. Researchers studying snooze behavior note that hitting snooze disrupts these important stages, and typically only offers light, fragmented sleep in between alarms — not the deep or REM sleep your body was actually reaching for.
In other words: you're not getting nine more minutes of sleep. You're getting nine minutes of your brain trying and failing to start a sleep cycle it can't finish, then getting yanked out of it again.
So Why Does It Feel Like It Helps?
Because in the moment, more time horizontal always feels better than less. That's not the same as more restorative. The research suggests heavy snoozers tend to show more erratic sleep patterns overall — consistent with the idea that snoozing isn't neutral, it's actively working against the sleep architecture your body was trying to complete.
The honest fix sleep researchers point to isn't "snooze smarter." It's simpler and less satisfying: set one alarm for the actual time you need to get up, and get up when it rings. No buffer alarm. No negotiating.
The Part Nobody Mentions: Why That's So Hard to Actually Do
Knowing this doesn't make it easier to do at 6am. The advice "just get up on the first alarm" assumes you have full access to your judgment in the exact moment your judgment is at its worst — foggy, groggy, and alone with a decision nobody else can see you make.
This is where knowing the science and actually changing the behavior tend to split. You can know snoozing isn't real rest and still do it anyway, because there's no cost to doing it when nobody's watching.
What Actually Breaks the Cycle
The one thing that reliably changes snooze behavior isn't more information about sleep cycles — it's making the decision visible to someone else. When another person can see whether you snoozed or got up, the "no one would know" logic that makes snoozing so easy quietly disappears.
That's the entire premise behind a shared alarm. RingLink rings for your whole group at once, and shows a real-time status — on time, snoozed, or missed — so the choice to snooze stops being invisible. Nobody's shaming anyone; it's just no longer a secret.
Try Waking Up Once, on the First Ring
You don't need to fight the science of sleep cycles with more willpower. You need someone who'd notice if you didn't get up.
Download RingLink free on the App Store and see if the first alarm is enough when someone else is watching.