New York gets to bed earlier than other major cities


So much for "the city that never sleeps." Jawbone makes a smart bracelet called UP that tracks your every step — literally — as well as the details about when you go to bed and rise. The point of the bracelet is to help people improve their health, but it also provides Jawbone with a treasure trove of data, as company data analyst Brian Wilt notes at the Jawbone blog.
Wilt uses this data to study cities, each of which, he says, has "a distinct 'thumbprint,'" a "unique way its citizens live their lives." He and his colleagues created unique data maps for New York and 20 other U.S. cities, plus some major metro areas around the world. Of these cities, Tokyo gets the least sleep (5 hours, 44 minutes), Australia gets the most (Melbourne: 6 hours, 57 minutes) and goes to bed the earliest (Brisbane, 10:57 pm), and Moscow is the last to bed (12:46 am) and last to rise (8:08 am).
But then Wilt narrows it down to seven of the world's largest cities — New York, Paris, Beijing, Tokyo, Moscow, Dubai, and Madrid — and creates this chart:
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"New Yorkers work hard and play hard, and they're the first to bed and among the first to rise," Wilt explains. If you click over to the site, the chart is interactive. And the city that never sleeps? Dubai, apparently. Granted, this is a self-selected sample of people who buy smart bracelets, but perhaps somebody should rewrite the lyrics of "New York, New York"?
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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