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Apps and devices that are meant to improve sleep can actually do the opposite, causing anxiety and insomnia.

Orthosomnia, a fixation on sleep metrics, has significant psychological and mental health implications.

Over-technologizing natural physical processes can result in fixation, obsession, and anxiety.

Consumer sleep technology (CST), popularly known as sleep trackers, is designed to help individuals become aware of their sleep patterns and to promote better, healthier sleep. But these apps and devices create an ironic paradox: The very technology that is meant to improve sleep can, in some cases, worsen sleep, cause anxiety, result in obsessive behaviors, and even bring on insomnia. Orthosomnia, a recent concept, describes situations where an individual becomes obsessed with optimal sleep metrics, based on device-driven sleep data provided by CST, such as fitness trackers and mobile phone sleep apps. Essentially, some people literally lose sleep over the idea of losing sleep.

There are significant psychological and mental health implications here. Through the lens of illness anxiety, constant checking (or hypervigilance) of any bodily function is seen as maladaptive and unhelpful. Were an individual, for instance, to compulsively check their blood pressure or pulse rate, we might view this behavior as neurotic or hypochondriac. But we tend to be more lenient when it comes to the use of CST, perhaps because it has become so normalized and prevalent. Despite its wide acceptance and usage, CST affords the same unfortunate opportunity for over-checking, hypervigilance, and obsessive behavior. Smith et al. (2019)........

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