According to PBS, one in three teens send more than 100 texts a day. I am definitely one of those teens. My phone is glued to my hand or pocket all day, and I answer each text within 30 seconds of recieving it. My phone is my life, and without it I would be lost. One major time I use it is before bed. At midnight, I’ll lay under my blankets, staring at the tiny lit screen, reading tweets that I might have missed throughout the day. When I’m finally tired enough, I lock it and turn over to try to fall asleep. According to recent studies, though, I’m doing exactly what I shouldn’t be doing before bed.
A study from 2008, when cell phones were less popular than they are now, showed that cell phone use before bed causes people to not be in a deep sleep as long throughout the night. “Sleep Texting” is even an increasing issue among teens, which involves replying to a text while you are sleeping (I am also guilty of doing this). If you are texting in your sleep, you are clearly not actually in a deep sleep, which means you may not be getting the necessary hours needed to function properly the next day.
A study from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston conducted a well done study of the effects of light on sleep. The study was a randomized control study, but was not double-blind, which could affect the conclusion slightly. Twelve subjects read on an iPad before bed, and twelve read on printed books. The subjects that read on the iPad had less melatonin, and “experienced shorter restorative REM cycles, delayed circadian rhythms, and felt sleepier the next morning despite getting eight hours of sleep.” Because there was a control group, I feel that the conclusion of this study, that light affects sleep, is an accurate and safe conclusion.
A few days ago, I wrote a blog about my struggles with sleep talking. After doing my research on phone use before bed, I am starting to wonder if my phone use has something to do with my sleep talking. It seems plausible that my cell phone use is causing me to not be in a deep sleep, which then may cause me to sleep talk. It would be interesting to do an experiment where one group uses their phones before bed and one group doesn’t, and then track their sleep throughout the night. We could easily see who sleep talks more and if there is a correlation between the two.
My research has opened my eyes to see that I need to be careful with how much I use my phone. As a college student, any sleep I can get is vital to my success, so jeopardizing that sleep with my phone use hasn’t been a smart move.
I definitely think this topic is an important one, but I also believe that there is something to expand this point too. The research you found is really interesting and I had no idea that cell phones could cause lighter sleep! But I also think there is another confounding variable that causes our cell phones to make us more tired which is that after most of us get in bed at night and finish everything we have to do, we spend anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours on our phones. For a lot of us, it is difficult to put our phones down, because we have so much we could do. We could be checking Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, playing a game, checking our email, or Googling all of our late night questions. Some studies, like this one say that the bright LED light keeps our bodies from producing melatonin, which keeps us awake longer. Or it may simply be because we find it hard to tear ourselves away and just put it down for the night. I’m not sure which one it is, but I should probably just read a book instead. Maybe that will be easier to put down and put me in a deeper sleep!