{"doi":"10.1093/sleep/zsab088","title":"Meta-analysis of age and actigraphy-assessed sleep characteristics across the lifespan","abstract":"STUDY OBJECTIVES: Sleep quantity and continuity vary across the lifespan. Actigraphy is a reliable and widely used behavioral measure of sleep in research and personal health monitoring. This meta-analysis provides a novel examination of whether age (in years) is associated with actigraphy-assessed sleep across the lifespan. METHODS: A systematic search of PubMed, Embase.com, Cochrane CENTRAL, and PsycINFO using \"actigraphy\" and \"sleep\" terms provided 7079 titles/abstracts; studies of individuals with known psychiatric or medical comorbidities were excluded. Ninety-one articles (N = 23 365) provided data for six meta-analyses examining sleep duration (k = 89), sleep efficiency (k = 58), bedtime (k = 19) and waketime (k = 9) for individuals ages 6-21, and bedtime (k = 7) and waketime (k = 7) for individuals ages 22 and older. RESULTS: At older ages, sleep duration was shorter (r = -0.12) and sleep efficiency was lower (r = -0.05). Older age was associated with later bedtime (r = 0.37) and wake-up time (r = 0.24) from ages 6-21, whereas older age was associated with earlier bedtime (r = -0.66) and wake-up time (r = -0.59) for ages 22 and above. The strength of these associations was modified by study continent, but not by any other moderator. CONCLUSIONS: Age was negatively associated with actigraphy-assessed sleep duration and efficiency, but the effects were small in magnitude. On the other hand, large associations were observed between age and sleep timing, despite a smaller literature and the absence of analyzable data for ages 30-60. Changes in sleep timing, rather than changes in sleep duration or continuity, may better characterize the effects of age on human sleep.","journal":"SLEEP","year":2021,"id":152284,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":76,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.7034,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":265804,"name":"Daniel J. Buysse","orcid":"0000-0002-3288-1864","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":363262,"name":"Anna L. Marsland","orcid":"0000-0001-8951-7513","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":255688,"name":"Aidan G.C. Wright","orcid":"0000-0002-2369-0601","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":271303,"name":"Jill Foust","orcid":"0000-0002-1295-4317","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":647308,"name":"Lucas W. Carroll","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":647309,"name":"Naina Kohli","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":647310,"name":"Rishabh Mehra","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":647311,"name":"Adam A. Jasper","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":647312,"name":"Swathi Srinivasan","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":312684,"name":"Martica H. Hall","orcid":"0000-0003-0642-2098","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":647307,"name":"Marissa A. Evans","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":130,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:43:22.562252Z","pmid":"33823052","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}