Have you ever been caught off guard by that hideous ‘Radar’ alarm? The default one used by Apple? I don’t even mean first thing in the morning. Sitting with my housemates, having lunch the other week, the piercing alarm sporadically went off. My body physically shook and I could feel my heart rate speed up, and from the exasperated sighs at the table, I could tell I wasn’t alone.

By this point, I had been awake for hours and was completely alert, so why was the ringing still so triggering? 

It may sound dramatic, but this alarm has gone through numerous rounds of testing to make it as effective as possible. So naturally, it’s made to have a startling effect on your mind and body. 

Part of the reason is due to association. If you think about it, every morning you wake up and it’s the first thing you hear, jolting you out of your peaceful slumber.

One Reddit user said: “When you are woken up out of sleep by a sound but your body hasn’t finished its sleep cycle, your brain starts associating that sound as annoying. One trick I do is to change the alarm tone* once every week. It manages to trick my brain into not feeling anxious.”

Another Reddit user added: “You’ll associate the sound with negativity, and the cortisol (stress hormone) that’s naturally released to get you up and causes anxiety.”

This idea of association is called the Pavlovian response. Apple Explained on YouTube describes it as conditioning, in that if you hear the same sound every time you wake up, your brain will start associating it with something bad.

In the morning, we often experience negative and stressful thoughts. These can be work, relationship, or generally life-related, and they flood through almost immediately after we hear that awful sound. 

So inevitably, any time we hear this sound, we will feel all those negative thoughts and emotions flooding back into the forefront of our minds.

This happens regardless of the time of day, which is why I had such a physical reaction to hearing it at the kitchen table with my housemates. 

Apple Explained also reiterated that it’s probably not best to use your favourite song as an alarm, because then you will start associating that song with these negative thoughts. 

They also say that, in addition to the association, there is some evidence to suggest that the radar sound effect itself is triggering.

The ‘radar’ effect has a short, rapidly occurring tonal sound and a short decay time, which is at a frequency of 2- 5 KHz, which is very sensitive to the human ear. 

The repetitive nature of the sound also makes it difficult to listen to continuously, meaning you can’t just leave it playing on your bedside table. It motivates you to reach over and turn it off as quickly as possible.

“Just like a toddler saying mommy over and over might test your patience, hearing the sharp radar alarm repeat itself until you turn it off is perhaps even more obnoxious.” They say.

The alarm is effective at getting us out of bed, but is it worth the cost of being triggered and the anxiety it induces?

If you feel the alarm is too much for you mentally or physically, there are plenty of other options available to wake you up in the morning. There are even other settings on the iPhone, like sleep mode, which is a much more relaxed and peaceful way to not only wake you up, but also help you wind down

Maybe it’s time to go back to traditional alarms, analogue clocks, or invest in the Hatch alarm clock. At Doze, we love gadgets like this as they offer a much more relaxed way to rise. The alarm clock went viral for its sunrise setting, which sees a warm light slowly turn on, often far ahead of the actual alarm. 

This helps you wake up more naturally and prepares your body for the start of your day.