2020 has been… something. It’s safe to say no one has been spared from the stress of the year’s many, many events, but one major point of worry — the presidential election — has just ended (despite what some may say).
BetterYou, the St. Paul startup specializing in digital coaching to help users maximize time and focus, has just released some election data on how sleep and screen time were affected in the week leading up to the big week. Unsurprisingly, it seems we all might need a few more naps in the coming weeks to make up for it.
Check out the election data — and the accompanying release on the startup’s process — below.
Don’t miss our interview with BetterYou founder Sean Higgins on The tech.mn Podcast!
Data on U.S. Election Anxiety
Press release
St. Paul, MN, Nov. 5, 2020 — The US presidential election, held in the backdrop of the pandemic, created yet another trigger for stress. This has led to peak levels of anxiety for Americans, but the true extent of the impact is something most folks don’t see everyday.
We collected sample data, representative of people in the US, from our population of 2,000 users. According to this sample, sleep culminated in a 20 minute drop in the week leading up to the election. The average person we observed had 6.5 hours for average hours of sleep from Oct. 26th through Nov. 1st, with an additional decline of 12 minutes happening the evening of the election, Nov. 3.
In addition, as sleep declined the amount of time spent on devices and app usage of all types (doom scrolling, news media etc.) continued to increase. Over the two days (3rd and 4th), we observed an average of 5.75 hours on device. This is up 23% from the four days preceding the election.
This data was collected by BetterYou.
