I made a chart a while back that was mostly subjective, anecdotal, and not based on real data to show changing sleep patterns as we get older:

This chart is not based on real data.

There’s real data to analyze our changing sleep patterns though. After looking at sleeplessness, I came back to our old friend that is the American Time Use Survey. I grabbed data for the past five years and plotted the percentage of people who are asleep and awake, over age and time of day. An area is colored yellow if 50 percent or more people were awake. Otherwise, the area is magenta.

One caveat when comparing to the original mock chart: there is only data for those 15 and older. The chart below starts then.

When the Majority Sleeps, by Age Sleep looks pretty consistent, once we age past the early years. 12p MORE PEOPLE AWAKE 6p Who needs to sleep early when you’re busy being young? 12a MORE PEOPLE ASLEEP 6a Welcome to adulthood. Retirement. Sleep in. You earned it. What’s sunrise? 12p 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80+ YEARS OLD SOURCE: AMERICAN TIME USE SURVEY 12p MORE PEOPLE AWAKE 6p Who needs to sleep early when you’re busy being young? 12a MORE PEOPLE ASLEEP 6a Adulthood… Retirement. Sleep in. You earned it. What’s sunrise? 12p 15 25 35 45 55 65 80+ YEARS OLD SOURCE: AMERICAN TIME USE SURVEY

It’s not as dramatic as the mock chart, but you can see subtle dips and rises with, especially around college age and post-retirement.

However, the binary color scheme limits the detail, and there’s of course a good amount of variation in how people sleep. So here’s a wider color scale:

When People Sleep, by Age

Looking at a gradient, we see a more detailed picture of sleep schedules. Although it’s still not as dramatic as my mock chart.

PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE ASLEEP 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Noon 6p MEDIAN SLEEP TIME Midnight Less consistent sleep schedule during the earlier years. Sleep is more consistent among older people. 6a MEDIAN WAKEUP TIME Appreciating the luxury of sleeping in. Noon 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80+ YEARS OLD SOURCE: AMERICAN TIME USE SURVEY PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE ASLEEP 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 12p 6p MEDIAN SLEEP TIME Less consistent sleep schedule during the early years. 12a Sleep is more consistent among older people. 6a MEDIAN WAKEUP TIME Appreciating the luxury of sleeping in. 12p 15 25 35 45 55 65 80+ YEARS OLD SOURCE: AMERICAN TIME USE SURVEY

I was surprised to see the wider bands in the later years, which seem to suggest a more consistent sleeping schedule and later wakeup times. Although I’m not totally convinced yet. Maybe I need to look at napping during the day.

Notes

The data comes from the American Time Use Survey, 2014-2018. I downloaded the data via IPUMS.

Activity data with ATUS is hierarchical. There’s a main category for sleeping, but it can be further classified as sleeping, sleeplessness, and sleeping not elsewhere classified. The calculations above only use the sleeping subcategory i.e does not include sleeplessness or sleeping n.e.c.

I made the charts in R.