Are Sleep Trackers A Scam?

A science-backed look at what wearables get right—and what truly helps you feel rested.

This is not my bedroom. It’s dreamy though, no? Photo by Kam Idris via Unsplash.

I grabbed a morning coffee with a former superstar teammate from back in the day when I was deputy editor at SELF this week. (Hot for me, iced for her; whole milk for both of us.) She’s a total badass who’s crushing it in the commerce editorial space. So it was especially fun for me to catchup with her, and hear how much she’s grown professionally and personally in the past decade. (Soar Meg, soar!)

We eventually got around to talking about the rise of AI—naturally—and how we use it these days. She said something that got my wheels turning, which was that she wished she could train one of the many AI platforms out there to remind her when to drink more water when she’s going too hard in her workouts, when to go to bed, all the things. A health assistant, if you will. (I digress, but personally, I want one to handle my email and book my kiddos’ dental cleanings, physicals, fill out the camp forms, deal with the laundry, brush my teeth and do my skincare routine for me at night, and and and…)

I think that ChatGPT, Gemini, Llama, Claude and other LLMs can be rad for tracking macros or building workouts, but there are devices that have been designed to help you with your day-to-day health behaviors in real time. They can do all of the above and more.

Including tracking your sleep.

It’s something I’ve personally dabbled with and have watched with curiosity over the years. Sleep tech is a big, growing space: The global market was worth $21.1 billion in 2023, and it’s projected to more than quadruple—reaching $88.4 billion by 2032, according to Precedence Research estimates. Wearables are leading that charge, thanks to growing interest in recovery, hormone health, and stress.

Heck, we even launched a Sleep Awards franchise while I was at Women’s Health because our readers couldn’t get enough content about rest and recovery. I hope they never read it in bed at night, when they should’ve been sleeping…