The morning alarm may be one of the most universally disliked sounds in American life, and a substantial majority of adults have developed the same response to it: postpone getting up. A national YouGov survey of 12,907 American adults found that 64 percent use the snooze function at least occasionally, demonstrating that the familiar practice remains firmly embedded in morning routines despite decades of changes in alarm technology and growing scientific attention to sleep.
The survey found considerable variation in how frequently Americans snooze. Eleven percent reported always using the function, 14 percent said they use it often, 19 percent sometimes and 20 percent rarely. Twenty-one percent said they never snooze, while 13 percent reported not using an alarm. Taken together, the findings show that delaying an alarm is not an unusual sleeping behavior but a routine experience for a broad portion of the adult population.
A much larger international analysis published in 2025 provided another examination of how people actually use snooze functions rather than relying solely on survey responses. Researchers analyzed more than 3 million sleep sessions involving 21,222 people, including 8,871 participants in the United States. Snoozing occurred during 55.6 percent of recorded sleep sessions. When participants used the function, they pressed snooze an average of 2.4 times and accumulated approximately 10.8 minutes of additional time in bed.
The biological explanation for snoozing begins with the transition between sleep and wakefulness. The brain does not necessarily reach complete alertness the moment the eyes open. Sleep inertia can temporarily reduce alertness, reaction speed and cognitive performance after awakening, producing the mental fog and physical reluctance commonly experienced during the first portion of the morning. Its severity can vary according to sleep stage, sleep duration, time of awakening and characteristics of the sleeper.
An alarm can therefore create an abrupt separation between biological sleep and the externally imposed requirement to wake. Pressing snooze delays that requirement and permits another brief period of sleep or drowsiness. The immediate benefit is straightforward: the sleeper receives additional time before having to become fully awake and physically leave bed. Whether those minutes constitute beneficial additional sleep is a more complicated scientific question.
Repeated snoozing fragments the final portion of sleep because every alarm creates another awakening. A person who repeatedly snoozes for 30 or 40 minutes is not necessarily receiving an equivalent amount of uninterrupted restorative sleep. Falling asleep, awakening, returning to sleep and awakening again creates a different sleep pattern than remaining asleep continuously until a later alarm.
Research, however, has not established that reasonable snoozing is inherently unhealthy. A controlled study involving habitual snoozers examined what happened when participants were permitted to snooze for approximately 30 minutes before getting up. Researchers found no substantial deterioration in overall nighttime sleep architecture, mood, morning sleepiness or the normal cortisol response associated with awakening. Participants obtained approximately six fewer minutes of actual sleep during the 30-minute snoozing period than when they awakened immediately.
The same research produced an especially interesting finding concerning mental performance. Snoozing was associated with improvements in several cognitive tests immediately after participants finally awakened, suggesting that a gradual transition may help some habitual snoozers overcome sleep inertia. Those findings do not establish snoozing as healthier than getting up immediately, but they challenge the longstanding assumption that pressing the button is automatically detrimental.
There is also no scientifically established universal snooze interval that everyone should follow. Five minutes may provide little opportunity to return to meaningful sleep, while longer periods create greater opportunity for repeated sleep interruption. Real-world data showing an average of approximately 10.8 minutes of snoozing indicates that many users keep the practice relatively brief, although heavier snoozers in the 2025 analysis averaged approximately four presses and 20.2 minutes.
Sleep researchers have also found associations between snoozing and sleep schedules. Later bedtimes have been associated with greater snooze use, while earlier bedtimes have been associated with less. That relationship places greater importance on the amount and quality of sleep occurring before the alarm. Snoozing cannot compensate for routinely obtaining insufficient sleep, regardless of how many additional minutes are accumulated after the first alarm.
Someone who consistently sets an alarm substantially earlier than the time he or she actually gets out of bed may also be sacrificing continuous sleep unnecessarily. If a person begins snoozing at 6 a.m. every morning but predictably remains in bed until 6:40, setting an alarm closer to the actual waking time could preserve more uninterrupted sleep. Frequent difficulty waking despite adequate opportunity for sleep can also warrant closer attention to sleep duration, scheduling and quality rather than simply increasing the number of alarms.
The snooze function has nevertheless demonstrated extraordinary durability. Alarm clocks have progressed from mechanical bells to clock radios, digital displays, smartphones and wearable devices capable of monitoring extensive sleep information. The fundamental snooze function has changed remarkably little because its purpose remains equally uncomplicated: it provides additional time between the first alarm and the point at which a sleeper intends to get out of bed.
Current evidence does not support classifying ordinary snoozing as either universally healthy or universally harmful. For people obtaining adequate sleep who prefer several additional minutes to transition into wakefulness, limited snoozing appears unlikely to represent a significant health concern. For people spending prolonged periods repeatedly silencing alarms because they remain exhausted, the more consequential issue may be insufficient or poorly timed sleep.
With 64 percent of American adults surveyed reporting at least occasional use, the snooze button remains more than a leftover feature from an earlier generation of alarm clocks. It continues to accommodate a basic characteristic of human sleep that modern technology has never eliminated: waking on command and becoming fully alert are not always simultaneous events. For people who need a brief transition, the old technology continues to perform a useful function. For those who wake comfortably with the first alarm, there is little physiological reason to start using it.