July 5, 2026, 6:14 am | Read time: 4 minutes
Sleep is vital for survival. More than that, restful sleep influences many aspects of our well-being. It protects against diseases, makes us more resilient to stress, ensures healthy skin and hair, and is essential for maintaining a healthy body weight and achieving fitness goals. Therefore, it’s wise to structure our daily lives to allow for sufficient and quality sleep. Smartwatches and trackers can assist in this. But when does sleep monitoring become excessive–and turn into an unhealthy obsession, known as orthosomnia?
Too little sleep is unhealthy, but too much can be as well. Frequent waking and lying awake at night reduce sleep quality. Numerous studies aim to clarify optimal sleep but simultaneously create uncertainty for many people–and a kind of sleep stress. Similar to tracking their daily steps or calorie intake, people now meticulously monitor their sleep. How many hours did they sleep last night? What does the tracker say about sleep phases and quality? Those who constantly worry about their sleep might already be experiencing orthosomnia.
What Is Orthosomnia?
The term was coined by Dr. Kelly Glazer Baron from the University of Utah Health. She is a clinical psychologist with additional training in behavioral sleep medicine and described several case studies in 2017.1
Together with her research team, Glazer Baron reported on three patients who heavily relied on commercial sleep tracker data to assess their sleep quality and became increasingly fixated on achieving “perfect sleep.” The authors named this psychological phenomenon of excessive focus on supposedly optimal sleep orthosomnia.
Orthosomnia is derived from two Greek terms. “Ortho” means “right” or “correct,” and “somnus” translates to “sleep” in German.
In all three cases, the patients trusted their tracker data more than objective sleep lab assessments, even though these devices only reliably measure sleep phases and wake times to a limited extent. The authors note that sleep trackers can exacerbate sleep anxiety or perfectionist behavior in some individuals, potentially causing sleep problems and complicating the treatment of sleep disorders.
Also interesting: Is the clock the enemy of our sleep?
Sleep Tracking Can Have Positive and Negative Effects
With the rise of fitness trackers and smartwatches and growing awareness of the health importance of sleep, more people are interested in their tracker sleep data. A study from Norway, published in early 2026, found in a survey that people under 50 are particularly likely to track their sleep. Many reported positive experiences, such as learning a lot about their sleep and prioritizing it more. However, negative effects were also reported. For instance, 17.8 percent of respondents said tracking their sleep made them worry more about it. Fourteen percent felt something was wrong with their sleep. Eleven point two percent experienced increased stress related to their sleep.2