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IN BRIEF
- Being female, living regionally and not living with children all contributed to people sleeping more.
- The data also revealed the average Australian adult takes around 9,000 steps a day.
For the first time, Australia has utilized wearable technology to monitor how its citizens sleep and move, uncovering that Australians average just over 7.5 hours of sleep each night.
In 2023, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) conducted a study involving over 4,000 participants who volunteered to wear devices tracking their activity and sleep patterns.
This Tuesday, the ABS unveiled the findings, offering a closer look at Australians’ sleep behaviors, alongside insights into their exercise habits.
Here’s a summary of the findings.
How are we sleeping?
The data reveals that participants in the study slept an average of seven hours and 36 minutes per night.
Ten per cent of adults slept more than nine hours a night on average, while 9 per cent got less than six hours.
Females slept 13 minutes longer than males, while those who lived in regional Australia got an extra nine minutes compared to those who lived in cities.
Living with dependent children shaved an average of 16 minutes off the time someone snoozed.
How much someone worked also impacted how long they slept.
People who worked more than 35 hours a week slept 20 minutes less than people who worked less than 35 hours a week.
Smoking also impacted people’s sleep, with non-smokers clocking an extra 16 minutes of sleep compared to smokers.
How often are we sitting still?
The ABS also used the data to track how often and how intensely the people in the study moved.
According to the data, people over the age of 18 took an average of 9,065 steps per day, while those over the age of 75 took an average of 5,776 steps.
Children aged five to 11 years old took nearly 13,000 steps a day on average.
They found 25 per cent of people did no vigorous physical activity in the week they wore the devices, while almost one in ten adults averaged more than ten minutes a day.
Seventy-seven per cent of Adults did at least one hour of moderate activity a day, with nearly ten 10 per cent doing three hours or more.
According to the data, children aged five to 11 years old did nearly an hour and a half of moderate or vigorous activity, while teenagers did just 40 minutes per day.
The average adult was inactive for nearly 12 hours each day, including while sleeping.
How are we eating?
The sleep and movement data are part of a broader public health study by the ABS, which has also studied people’s diets.
Released last year, the earlier part of this study found that people were consuming an average of 3.2kg of food and drinks — including water — a day.
It also found that “discretionary” or “junk foods” made up 31.3 per cent of the average person’s diet.
This was down from 35.5 per cent in a 2011-12 study.
The study also found that one in four participants reported being on some kind of diet.
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