Overview

• The weeklong Brown study tracked 102 elementary-school children with wrist accelerometers and parent diaries to compare perceptions with objective data.
• Children averaged 8 hours 20 minutes of sleep versus parent reports of more than 9.5 hours, with devices detecting over 38 minutes of nightly wakefulness that parents largely missed.
• Only 14% of children met the American Academy of Pediatrics’ 9–12 hour guideline despite 83% of parents believing their child’s sleep was sufficient.
• Latino participants slept just over eight hours on average and 4.4% met guidelines, compared with 8.5 hours and 22.8% for non-Latino children.
• Researchers cautioned that wearables can misclassify quiet wakefulness as sleep and called for renewed emphasis on family communication and practical sleep-hygiene counseling.