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Sleep glossary

Social jet lag

The shift between your sleep times on weekdays and at the weekend. Like travelling to another time zone and back every weekend.

A little more detail

The mismatch between biological time and social time such as work and school; it is expressed as the difference between sleep timing on workdays and on free days. The difference grows most in late chronotypes: sleep debt builds up on workdays and they try to make up for it on free days. In the 501-person study by Wittmann and colleagues, smoking was markedly more common in late chronotypes; the authors suggested that these associations were explained more by social jet lag than by chronotype itself.

Source: Wittmann M, Dinich J, Merrow M, Roenneberg T. Social jetlag: misalignment of biological and social time. Chronobiol Int. 2006;23(1-2):497-509. doi:10.1080/07420520500545979

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