Are you getting enough sleep?
Sleep need falls sharply through childhood and then barely moves. The adult range is narrower than most people hope.
Short
7 h — closest reference: US adult average at 7 h.
Reference figures are measurements and are rounded; the unit conversion behind them is exact.
| Reference | Size | Yours ÷ theirs | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| US adult average | 7 h | 1× | About 7 hours reported |
| adult | 8 h | 0.875× | 7–9 hours |
| teenager | 9 h | 0.778× | 8–10 hours |
| school-age child | 10 h | 0.7× | 9–11 hours |
| toddler | 12 h | 0.583× | 11–14 hours |
| newborn | 16 h | 0.438× | 14–17 hours |
Worth knowing
- The National Sleep Foundation recommends 7–9 hours for adults. Around a third of adults in high-income countries report less than seven.
- Sleep debt does not repay hour for hour. Recovery sleep restores some cognitive function within a night, but reaction time takes several.
Frequently asked
How much sleep do adults need?
Seven to nine hours for most adults aged 18 to 64. A small minority function well on six; the number who believe they do is far larger than the number who do.
Is too much sleep bad?
Consistently sleeping over nine hours correlates with worse health outcomes, but the causation usually runs the other way — illness causes long sleep more often than long sleep causes illness.
How to read this
These are population recommendations, not medical advice.
Where the numbers come from
- National Sleep Foundation consensus recommendations