Bedtime in America: Which Cities Stay Up The Latest?
Turns out The City That Never Sleeps gets its nickname for good reason: New York is home to the most night owls in America, while Hawaiians go to bed the earliest, according to a new data study.
San Francisco-based technology company Jawbone used anonymous data from its UP health tracker to examine how sleep patterns vary across the United States. The average bedtimes and total hours of sleep per night were tracked county-by-county and presented on two interactive maps.
"By looking at the data of more than a million people across the U.S., we get fascinating insight into the factors that affect the time we go to bed," Brian Wilt, Jawbone's principal data scientist and creator of the visuals, told Yahoo Health. "It shows that our bedtimes are strongly influenced by sundown, which is why we see sharp contrasts in bedtimes on either side of a given time zone."
Related: Getting Eight Hours of Sleep a Night? You Might Just Want To Cut Back
Brooklynites recorded the latest average bedtime of 12:07 a.m. (Guess the Beastie Boys had it right with their famous "No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn" refrain), more than 90 minutes later than earliest-to-bed residents of Maui (10:31 p.m.).
All New York boroughs recorded average bedtimes on the late end of the scale:
Brooklyn (Kings County): 12:07 a.m.
Manhattan (New York County): 11:55 p.m.
Queens (Queens County): 11:52 p.m.
Bronx (Bronx County): 11:47 p.m.
Staten Island (Richmond County): 11:46 p.m.
It's no surprise that New Yorkers stay up late, nor is it shocking that other night owls reside in cities known for their nightlife and towns with major colleges.
Party cities:
Miami (Miami-Dade County): 11:54 p.m.
Atlantic City, NJ (Atlantic County): 11:53 p.m.
Las Vegas (Clark County): 11:49 p.m.
New Orleans (Orleans County): 11:47 p.m.
College towns:
Indiana University (Monroe County, Ind.): 11:53 p.m.
Cornell University, Ithaca College (Tompkins County, N.Y.): 11:48 p.m.
Purdue University (Tippecanoe County, Ind.): 11:46 p.m.
Pennsylvania State University (Centre County, Pa.): 11:43 p.m.
University of Georgia (Clarke County, Ga.): 11:41 p.m.
Texas A&M University (Brazos County, Texas): 11:41 p.m.
Ohio University (Athens County, Ohio): 11:41 p.m.
Related: How to Sleep Well in College Even With Night Owl Roommates
The data also reveals that not only do residents of major cities go to bed later, but also they sleep fewer hours compared to people in smaller towns and suburbs. "One of the major findings in our study of city sleep was that people living in cities just don't get enough," wrote Tyler Nolan for The Jawbone Blog. "No major city in the United States averages above the NIH-recommended seven hours of sleep per night."
