People are using social media trends to get a good night’s sleep. CT doctors say it can cause harm

Hartford Courant – Tuesday, September 22, 2026
By Sean Krofssik

People are going to great lengths for a perfect night’s sleep.

And, according to the National Heart, Lung or Blood Institute, an estimated 50 million to 70 million U.S. adults have sleep or wakefulness disorders.

In their quest for a solution, many people have turned to sleepmaxxing, a viral wellness movement that has gained popularity on social media.

“Sleepmaxxing is an overarching term that includes a variety of different interventions that break down into a couple different categories,” said Dr. Jennifer Langstengel, a clinical assistant professor and pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine specialist at UConn Health said. “There are things that manipulate your airway like mouth tape, jaw positioning devices that are almost like a chin strap.”

Mouth taping, taking melatonin and the use of sleep tracking technology are among the tactics people use. However, some of the sleepmaxxing trends are not recommended by sleep experts, who say patients are developing orthosomnia or sleep anxiety.

Dr. Zubin Bham, medical director for the Bridgeport Hospital Center for Sleep Medicine, said sleepmaxxing has been on his radar for about five years. He said he has seen patients develop orthosomnia from their obsession with statistics from their Apple Watch or Oura Ring.

“Orthosomnia is actually a term where you track your sleep so intensely and so religiously that you actually do the opposite and you actually make your sleep worse,” Bham said. “I see people with sleep apnea, with insomnia, with narcolepsy, with a lot of other sleep conditions, and a lot of times I’m tracking them in different ways that are proven by science and medical training.”

According to an American Academy of Sleep Medicine survey in 2025, nearly half of adults (48%) have used a sleep tracking device people wear or have on phones.

Bham said the information and data presented to him by patients from their devices is “not backed by science.”

“They track it so religiously that they will almost ruin their sleep or actually psych themselves out from getting a good night’s rest because they’re like, ‘Well, my watch said this or my ring said this or my Fitbit said I didn’t really sleep or I didn’t have any REM sleep,’” Bham said.

According to Bham, this technology does not have the capabilities to check sleep stages and the only way to do that is with an EEG. He said the sleep tracking technology “interprets data through fancy proprietary algorithms.”

“When you’re snoring, you’re probably in REM sleep. The second half of the night is more REM. The first half of the night is N3 or deep sleep. These algorithms are guesstimating what stages of sleep you’re spending without actually any hard evidence,” Bham said.

Bham said the vast majority of his patients either have insomnia and sleep apnea. Bham said those following or interested in sleepmaxxing should follow techniques that are backed by science and aren’t just social media trends.

Dr. Steven Thau, a sleep medicine specialist at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport with nearly three decades of practice in this field, said he’s seen this trend develop since the COVID pandemic and people had more time to think about their sleep quality.

One of the areas of concern for Thau is the practice of mouth taping.

“I shake my head figuring out why anybody would like to do that,” Thau said.

“The number of people that I’ve found who have been helped by mouth taping are probably 1 in 20. What I found uniformly is that people are taping their mouths even though they can’t breathe through their nose. And so now what are they going to do? Some people are able to force enough air in through their nose, or they wake up enough times or they’re not just telling me what is really going on. But I’m inclined to think that it’s failing a lot more people than it succeeds.

“I think they’re trying to minimize sleeping with their mouths open. But if you wanted to do that, the first thing would be to make sure that your nasal passages are clear, and they don’t have bad allergies, bad sinuses or bad deviated septum,” Thau added.

“People are just waking up and saying, ‘Oh, I’m going to do this because I heard it online,’ which is amazing to think that there’s some of us who’ve been trying to encourage people to get healthier with better sleep habits for nearly 30 years. Some of these people read it on a blog and they’re all gung-ho. Well, maybe they should read better blogs.”

Bham also noted that people taping their mouths “probably have sleep apnea.”

“They’re snoring, they have a dry mouth, and so they’re trying to fix that by taping their mouth shut to create a little bit of positive pressure in the back of your throat. But that’s not actually how it works,” Bham said. “If anything, you’re making your sleep worse, causing worsening oxygen saturations at night because the mouth stays open to overcome the obstructed airways. The other thing I’ve seen is people coming in with a horrible rash over their lips and their and their mouth from the mouth tape itself because I guess it’s very sticky tape. Those are things I run into quite frequently.”

Thau added that sleep methods aren’t for everyone and depend on the individual. “The devil’s in the details. Sometimes taking too much melatonin could be a bad thing. Taking melatonin at the wrong time can be a bad thing. There are different philosophies about these things. And it’s better to have clear directives or instructions that work for the individual patient rather than for most people,” Thau said.

“These influencers just say what works for them. Just because it works for them doesn’t mean it will work for you,” Thau added. “I don’t understand why people are just so willing to go with the flow and allow themselves to be so gullible.”

Thau said he has also seen a spike in insomnia in his patients over the past 10 years with “uncivilized rhetoric and politics” from watching cable news. He said patients tell him national and international politics are negatively affecting their sleep.

“These thoughts get planted and people are just ruminating about these, these concepts all night and it really is making people very sleep deprived,” Thau said. “I tell my patients they should probably not watch the news after 9 p.m. unless it’s for work or they have to. You don’t need to know what is happening after 10 p.m. or 11 p.m.”

Thau also said endless streams of entertainment on screens and doom scrolling are counterproductive to being able to relax before trying to sleep. Thau suggested that everyone needs to relax before bed to clear their mind, and if they can’t fall asleep after 15 minutes, “get out of bed and do something relaxing without a phone or a computer screen.”

Thau said if someone is having trouble with their sleep, they should go to a professional instead of following online trends.

“You’re getting advice from a complete rookie who’s pretending, masquerading, in some ways practicing sleep medicine without a license. You’re not going to be able to find that person if you have a problem later on in life, or if you have a heart rhythm disturbance or you pass out or you have a heart attack,” Thau said. “I know that I have to be careful with my recommendations because I am held to account. These sleep influencers are able to get away with it. I don’t get it. It’s mindboggling.”

Like Bhan, Langstengel said patients come into her office with their sleep scores and are fixated on those numbers.

“It told me I only got X amount of deep sleep. But the least accurate thing on Apple, on all consumer health wearables, is staging of sleep. Saying if you’re in dream sleep or non-dream sleep,” Langstengel said.

“The first thing I always say is, ‘Could this be coming from a place of real fact?’” she noted. “The sleep score is a private algorithm that is owned by the company that is selling the product. The sleep score is not a number that I know or how to interpret, nor can anyone else who’s a sleep physician. Telling me your sleep score is 88 or 38 doesn’t actually tell me what’s wrong with your sleep.”

She said the amount of sleep needed differs by age, and many of her elderly patients sleep four or five hours a night and then nap during the day and it works for them.

“I don’t have a desire to try to intervene on that. This rise of ‘Look at how these idealistic people on the internet do things. They are going to live forever, and I should try to live forever,’ and it’s been a rise of that.

Langstengel said one reason that people seem to be turning to social media as a remedy for sleeping issues could be due to access to care, cost of care and high deductibles for health insurance. The biggest danger though is not being seen for a potential real sleep disorder that could be causing them impairment and harm.

“I had a young patient who was tracking everything and was just trying to fix it,” Langstengel said. “They had narcolepsy and that’s not going to be fixed through this. There’s definitely some of that. The orthosomnia and the rise in insomnia associated with the fixation on this is real.”

Langstengel noted that UConn Health has a dedicated sleep psychologist who helps people with a fixation on data. She said the real concern is if you’re ignoring other disorders. “There are fringe behaviors that can cause harm.”

“We are seeing a multi-factorial rise in sleep disorders,” Langstengel said. “There has been a lot of instability culturally in our country over the past six years with COVID and people feeling isolated and staying at home. That seemed to surge social media. A lot of this is being driven by TikTok reels and things like that. That is great clickbait on TikTok, but it’s usually not the most fact-based stories aren’t great TikTok clickbait. The rise of this influencer movement is a huge deal.”

Langstengel said that not everything is bad about sleepmaxxing before it hits the extreme level.

“Consistent bedtimes and rise times the strongest anchor your brain to tell you when it’s time for bedtime and time to get up,” Langstengel said. “If you have a sleep disorder, it’s good to be consistent in your sleep with bedtimes and wake times within an hour each day.”

“What I tell people is that some of these trends are good,” Bham added. “If you use one or two of them to improve your sleep habits or your sleep hygiene, great. When you try to do all 10 things together and have this very dedicated routine regimen, and anything falls apart, you kind of psych yourself off from getting a good night’s rest. You’ve actually done yourself a disservice by sleepmaxxing. Too much of a good thing could be bad when it comes to the sleepmaxxing trend.”

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