Till Roenneberg On Pandemics (1)

2021 - Daylight Symposium

Pandemics

Till Roenneberg on Pandemics

Speakers

Till Roenneberg Resized

Till Roenneberg (DE)

Professor

LMU Munich

Till Roenneberg is a professor of biology and medical psychology at LMU Munich and in his talk he examines the effects of social restriction on daily timing, sleep, and wellbeing. 

Roenneberg and his team asked over 10’000 people from different countries around 50 questions concerning their behavior in a social restriction or lockdown situation. According to Roenneberg, the sleep timing changes when people are in lockdown, and the sleep duration changes as well. The people who slept too short before the pandemic gained most of their sleep back and slept much longer. Thus, the more people lived against their body clock before lockdown, the more they improved their situation. He then further explains the body clock and in what way urbanization affected it – and with that the importance of alarm clocks in our everyday lives. Roenneberg sums up the pandemic in the end as having had many negative consequences, but also many positives outcomes, such as more flexible work schedules, more home offices, decreased air traffic, and a reduction of the need for daylight savings time.