Meanings
- uncountablehuman sciencesAn unhealthy obsession with achieving the correct amount and type of sleep.
Orthosomnia is a psychological condition recently identified by Baron et al. [3], who analyzed the behavior of fitness trackers users who used these devices to track their sleep.
2018 April, Linda Anticoli, Marco Basaldella, “Shut Up and Run: the Never-ending Quest for Social Fitness”, in WWW '18: Companion Proceedings of the The Web Conference3 more examples
Orthosomnia, the “perfectionistic quest for the ideal sleep in order to optimize daytime function”, is sadly becoming more prevalent, arguably due to increased sleep tracker use [73].
2018, Megan Roberts, Why Your Ketogenic Diet Isn't Working Part 2: Sleep and Circadian RhythmIn our view, this is an exercise of diminishing returns, and may actually impair quality of their sleep and cause orthosomnia, a condition where a person has a perfectionist quest to achieve perfect sleep. (Baron et al, 2017).
2019, Captain Allison Brager, Meir Kryger, A New Approach: Integrating Sleep Science and Consumer Wearables to Improve Access and Drive Greater Engagement, page 10The sleep-tracking function tempts many people into thinking too much about sleep, which is the sort of thing that can make it hard to drift off. There's a term of art, “orthosomnia”. It means that you're losing sleep because you're worried that your sleep tracker is judging you.
[2025 September 13, Tim Harford, “The remorseless rule of my fitness tracker”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 19
Origin
Cite this entry
orthosomnia. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/orthosomnia
“orthosomnia.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/orthosomnia. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “orthosomnia,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/orthosomnia.
Source: orthosomnia on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.