Sleep pattern of Hong Kong residents during the 2019 anti-extradition bill controversy

This study examined the sleep pattern of Hong Kong residents during the anti-extradition bill controversy from June to December of 2019. We used crowdsourced sleep data of 5,442,005 sleep records from 76,600 users (15,693 records from 274 users who were Hong Kong residents at the time of the study, mean age 33.3, SD 9.6). A total of 123 participants (44.9%) provided at least 30 days of data. We compared these sleep parameters in Year 2019 to their expected values. The expected value of these variables was computed using linear regression, controlling for time zone, the month of the record, and the day of the record (S/M/T/W/T/F/S). At the nights of major protest events, habitual sleep duration of the participants was reduced by 8 to 23 min and delayed their sleep onset by at most 34 min. Date-specific analysis (12th June, 21st July, 31st August, 1st October, 12th November, 23rd November, and 24th November) revealed Hong Kong residents changed their sleep pattern according to the timeline of the protests.