Wearable devices reveal changing sleep patterns throughout college years

Sleep is a fundamental aspect of human health that plays a crucial role in cognitive function, academic performance, and social interactions. A study published July 1, 2026 in PLOS One by Yao Zhao at Temple University, USA, and colleagues suggests that wearable devices can provide accurate, longitudinal sleep data to facilitate analyses of changing sleep patterns over time.

College students are vulnerable to insufficient or irregular sleep. However, changes in sleep patterns across the entire college career are not well understood and have historically relied on self-reported data. In order to examine longitudinal sleep patterns and their impacts among college students, researchers analyzed daily sleep records from Fitbit devices worn by 76 undergraduates at the University of Notre Dame between 2015-2019.

The researchers found that average sleep duration increased an average of 8 minutes from freshman to senior year. Students with higher grade point averages slept longer on average than those with lower grades.

The study had many limitations that limit its generalizability. The study was conducted at a single, highly selective university with a nonrepresentative sample. Additionally, the small sample due to high participant attrition should be noted. The researchers did not adjust for potential confounding variables, for example, mental health, alcohol use, or courseload difficulty. Future studies are needed to replicate the results and investigate the reasons driving changes in sleep patterns.

According to the authors, "These findings demonstrate the utility of functional data analysis (FDA) for sleep research. FDA offers several advantages for analyzing longitudinal sleep data: it preserves the continuous, dynamic nature of sleep behavior; it accommodates irregular observation schedules common with wearable devices; and it enables modeling of time-varying relationships that traditional approaches cannot capture".

The authors add: "Our study found that students with higher academic performance consistently slept more, not less, throughout their college years. The positive relationship between sleep and GPA remained remarkably stable over four years, suggesting that adequate sleep may be an important component of long-term academic success."

"By analyzing more than 61,000 daily sleep records collected from wearable devices, we were able to observe how sleep patterns evolve throughout the college experience. We found clear seasonal changes linked to the academic calendar, with sleep often declining during periods of increased academic pressure."