by Ankur Kayastha ‘15

Get into bed. Sleep, AKA blackout. Wake up. Go to school. This was my and other high school students’ sleeping routine every night before school. There is no doubt that high schoolers are on a delayed schedule and are completely sleep deprived, but we never knew how much until a new smartphone app hit the stores entitled “Sleep Cycle”.

This new app was introduced to me and others through an AP Psychology class taught by Christine McKeldin. The psych class was immersed in an altered states of consciousness unit, where sleep was a major factor, and clearly a relevant topic of discussion. Many students added their two cents about the deprived sleeping patterns that most of them suffer from, indicating that they receive three to four hours of sleep each night, and they claim never ‘hitting deep sleep’. McKeldin concluded by sharing an app that she had recently downloaded that tracked her sleep progress.

“I downloaded and checked out the app and found it interesting to see how my sleep patterns differed on a nightly basis … I always find it fascinating that we spend so much time thinking about and chasing sleeping while knowing little about it,” said McKeldin.

To utilize the app, you must place the phone on the corner of the bed completely flat and level. The app itself analyzes body movement and motion through the use of the phone’s accelerometer to determine the stage of sleep that you are in. The less movement occurring at a certain point of time within the sleep, the deeper sleep you are in. The app’s main purpose is an alarm feature, which allows you to set an interval time of waking up. Within this interval, the app will choose the point at which you are in your ‘lightest’ form of sleep, so that you can wake up without the grogginess or the crankiness. It provides you with sleep statistics including a time graph of the stages of your sleep, your sleep quality in a percentage, the amount of time spent sleeping (or laying in bed), and more. Not to mention, the app comes with some pretty nice and soothing alarms that are more appealing than the dreaded default one we all know and hate.

Genius, right? But is it actually practical, and does it actually work? I say yes to all three. In the informatics section of the app, it describes the stages of the sleep such as REM (Rapid-Eye Movement) sleep and non-REM sleep. According to many critics, the app is legitimate as well. Clearly, the app is not 100-percent precise and accurate, but it is a cornerstone to an actual sleep analysis that would occur at sleep centers. It is as close as you can get with just a smartphone.

The app is used by many, and it is improving with every update. Get this; it can supposedly even measure your heart rate. You do this as soon as you wake up by placing your finger on your camera and flash (the flash stays on), and it detects the color changes within your finger to predict your heartbeat. Legitimate? You be the judge. For right now, many students are buying in.

“I look forward to going to bed, and turning on Sleep Cycle is the last thing I do. The first thing I wake up to is a sleep chart indicating that I get as much sleep as a sleep-deprived teenager. It’s not lying,” said junior Ali Waseem.