A systematic review found that in many countries, the average amount of sleep citizens got per night increased in recent years, reports New York magazine.
Ask people how much sleep they tend to get, in other words, and their answers may not be as accurate as scientists would like them to be; this is a problem not just with the sleep literature, by the way, but with any kind of study that relies on self-reports. That 2012 systematic review, on the other hand, relied on time-use surveys — though these come with their owncaveat, in that these respondents may be reporting the number of hours they spent in bed, which, as too many of us know from experience, may not be the same thing as time spent in blissful slumber.
