Russians apparently have a thing about staying up late.
According to Jawbone, the company that makes wearable fitness bands that track sleep and activity, Russians, on average, go to bed later than anybody else.
Jawbone's data scientists crunched data from millions of Jawbone users in about 40 countries and found that people in Russia typically go to bed at 12:51 a.m.
But just because Russians tend to go to bed later doesn't mean they get less sleep.
Russians actually get quite a bit of shuteye because they also wake up later than everybody else. According to Jawbone, Russians, on average, wake up at 8:30 a.m., so they typically get seven hours of sleep.
(Jawbone said its data scientists looked at anonymized data from millions of nights of sleep in Russia to come to these conclusions.)
Staying up late seems to start at a young age in Russia.
Donna Scaramastra Gorman, a writer who lives with her family in Moscow, recently wrote in Time that Russian "children of all ages" tend to have late bedtimes.
"Russian elementary students at my kids’ school often get home after 10 p.m. — they’re kept busy with after-school language classes and sports until late in the evening," Gorman wrote earlier this month. "And they’re still expected to finish all of their homework before they go to bed. Russians prize education, not as a means to an end, but as the end itself. And frankly, I think they’re a little bit intimidated by the teachers. Teachers are typically held in high regard here, and no parent wants to get summoned to the school because their kid isn’t doing the work."
Other countries that Jawbone says have relatively late average bedtimes (after midnight) include Argentina, South Korea, Greece, Spain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and Turkey, among others.
Australians and South Africans, on the other hand, typically go to bed before 11 p.m., according to the company.
There are important caveats to consider when looking at this data. Jawbone didn't look at data from every country in the world — its products are sold in about 40 countries, and there are just under 200. Also, only certain types of people — perhaps those who are more conscious about health — buy and wear activity trackers.
