Florida sues Fitbit over 67 minutes of sleep

A resident of Florida filed a lawsuit against Fitbit because, in his opinion, the company's devices cannot correctly track the duration of a user's sleep, Ars Technica reports .

The lawsuit says Fitbit devices “overestimate sleep time by 67 minutes every night” compared to polysomnography, a more accurate way that scientists use sleep tracking. If we compare the results of Fitbit and a less accurate method - actigraphy, then the results are again not in favor of the bracelet. The data gap is about 43 minutes per day. The lawsuit cites the text of a study conducted in 2012 on 24 people and published in the journal Health.

The plaintiff James Brickman purchased the Fitbit Flex fitness bracelet back in 2013 and his lawsuit can now accept the status of a group. James hopes that other buyers of FitBit bracelets from Power, Flex, Ultra and second-generation devices, such as Charge and Surge, for whom sleep duration tracking technology has been announced, will join him.

“Fitbit’s sleep duration tracking function simply cannot tell the user how well he slept with at least some accuracy,” the lawsuit said. According to James, Fitbit is misleading consumers by providing them with incorrect data on the duration of sleep.

“To think that you sleep 67 minutes more than you actually slept could be dangerous to your health and lead to disastrous consequences in the long run.”

The lawsuit was filed with the federal court in San Francisco and is referred to the laws of the state of California on unfair competition, as well as to the law on advertising, which does not allow the spread of false information about the products sold.

Fitbit has not yet commented on this situation.