The alarm goes off. You reach over, slap the snooze button, and drift back to sleep for a few more precious minutes. Then it goes off again. And maybe again. This ritual plays out in millions of bedrooms every morning, with people chasing fragments of sleep they know won't really help.
If you've ever wondered why alarm clocks come with a snooze button—a feature that seems designed to make us late—you're not alone. The snooze button is one of those inventions that seems to work against its own purpose. An alarm clock exists to wake you up, so why include a button that delays that goal?
The answer involves mechanical constraints, human psychology, and a feature that was never meant to become the daily habit it is today.
The Problem This Was Meant to Solve
The snooze button emerged from a simple observation: waking up is hard. When an alarm jolts you from sleep, you're often groggy, disoriented, and not fully conscious. This state, called sleep inertia, can last anywhere from a few minutes to over an hour. During this period, cognitive function is impaired, and the urge to return to sleep is powerful.
Before snooze buttons, people who weren't ready to wake had two options: ignore the alarm entirely or force themselves out of bed immediately. The first option risked oversleeping; the second felt brutal. What people wanted was a middle ground—a way to acknowledge the alarm while buying a few more minutes to transition from sleep to wakefulness.
The snooze button offered exactly that: a brief reprieve, a gentle transition, a compromise between the alarm's demand and the body's resistance. It was designed to make the waking process feel less abrupt and more humane.
How It Actually Came to Exist
The first snooze button appeared in 1956, introduced by General Electric-Telechron on their Snooz-Alarm clock. The concept was simple but novel: press a button, and the alarm would silence itself temporarily before sounding again.
But why nine minutes? This is where mechanical constraints enter the story. Early alarm clocks used physical gears to track time, and adding a snooze function meant working within the existing gear mechanisms. The standard gear configurations made it easier to set the snooze interval at just under ten minutes—specifically, nine minutes and some seconds.
Engineers could have redesigned the gear systems to allow for a full ten minutes, but it would have been more expensive and complex. Nine minutes was close enough, and the slight awkwardness of the number didn't seem to matter. Once established, the nine-minute standard became convention, copied by other manufacturers and eventually becoming the default even in digital clocks that have no mechanical constraints.
The snooze button was an immediate success. People loved having the option to delay their morning, even if just briefly. Within years, it became a standard feature on alarm clocks, so expected that clocks without snooze buttons seemed incomplete.
Why It Still Exists Today
Despite decades of research suggesting that snoozing doesn't actually help—and may make grogginess worse—the snooze button remains universal. Every smartphone alarm includes it. Every clock radio has it. It's one of those features that persists because people want it, regardless of whether it's good for them.
The snooze button survives because it addresses a psychological need, not a physiological one. Hitting snooze feels like a small victory, a moment of control over the harsh demands of the morning. Even if those extra nine minutes don't provide restful sleep, they provide something else: the feeling of stealing time, of not immediately surrendering to the day's obligations.
There's also the comfort of routine. For chronic snoozers, the snooze button becomes part of the waking ritual. They set their alarms early specifically to have snooze time built in. The alarm isn't really the wake-up call—it's the warning that the wake-up call is coming.
Some modern alarm apps have tried to eliminate snoozing by requiring users to solve puzzles or scan barcodes to turn off the alarm. These exist precisely because designers recognize that the snooze button enables a habit many people want to break. Yet traditional snooze buttons persist because, for all their flaws, people aren't ready to give them up.
What People Misunderstand About It
The biggest misconception is that snoozing provides meaningful rest. Sleep scientists consistently point out that the sleep you get between snooze alarms is fragmented and low-quality. You don't have time to enter deep sleep, and the repeated awakenings can actually increase sleep inertia rather than reduce it. You'd likely feel more alert if you set your alarm for the time you actually need to get up and slept straight through.
Another misconception is that the nine-minute interval has some scientific basis. It doesn't. It's purely a legacy of mechanical engineering constraints from the 1950s. There's nothing magical or optimal about nine minutes—it's just what the gears allowed.
Many people also believe they need their snooze time and couldn't function without it. But research suggests this is largely habit rather than necessity. People who quit snoozing cold turkey often report feeling better after a short adjustment period. The snooze button created a need that didn't exist before its invention.
Perhaps the most interesting misunderstanding is about what the snooze button is for. It was designed as an occasional aid for rough mornings, not as a daily crutch. The inventors never imagined people would hit it three, four, or five times every single morning. The snooze button persists because it solved a real problem—but we've taken that solution far beyond its intended use.