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posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday November 15 2016, @01:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the put-the-phone-down-and-snuggle dept.

As the numbers of smartphones and other personal electronic devices have risen, so has the prevalence of insomnia and sleep deprivation. And though these two things generally correlate, there hasn't been good data on how often these devices are being used, by whom, and the relationship between their use and the incidence of sleep disorders. A group of researchers from the University of California San Francisco set out to collect this data with the help of people enrolled in the Health eHeart Study. Their results are presented in a paper published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

Total screen-time over 30 days was a median 38.4 hours (IQR 21.4 to 61.3) and average screen-time over 30 days was a median 3.7 minutes per hour (IQR 2.2 to 5.5). Younger age, self-reported race/ethnicity of Black and "Other" were associated with longer average screen-time after adjustment for potential confounders. Longer average screen-time was associated with shorter sleep duration and worse sleep-efficiency. Longer average screen-times during bedtime and the sleeping period were associated with poor sleep quality, decreased sleep efficiency, and longer sleep onset latency.

A total of 653 participants ran a smartphone app that monitored the number of minutes in each hour the screen was on. The total and average screentime were computed, as well as the average screen-time during self-reported bedtime hours and sleeping periods. Participant demographics, medical information, and sleep habits were obtained using a survey. What is notable about this work is that this is the first large study that directly measured screentime usage and compared it to demographics and medical information; however, sleep habits were measured only once using a survey.

Their conclusions, as summed up in the paper:

These findings on actual smartphone screen-time build upon prior work based on self-report and confirm that adults spend a substantial amount of time using their smartphones. Screen-time differs across age and race, but is similar across socio-economic strata suggesting that cultural factors may drive smartphone use. Screen-time is associated with poor sleep. These findings cannot support conclusions on causation. Effect-cause remains a possibility: poor sleep may lead to increased screen-time. However, exposure to smartphone screens, particularly around bedtime, may negatively impact sleep.


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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday November 15 2016, @03:04PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 15 2016, @03:04PM (#426980)

    Grand OP might be confusing cause and effect, if I'm not sick or doing something dumb, basically if I get a good nights sleep, I wake up a couple minutes before the alarm would have gone off, so I shut it off so as not to annoy other sleeping people. Sometimes I go a couple weeks between being woken up by the buzzer. Things get unpleasant twice a year due to daylight savings time, but I'm about back to normal now.

    The alarm is supposed to be a failsafe more than an activation signal. And if you're always operating on the emergency failsafe, you're probably doing something wrong before the alarm goes off, the problem isn't the alarm itself.

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  • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Wednesday November 16 2016, @02:53AM

    by Geotti (1146) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @02:53AM (#427328) Journal

    I wake up [...] before the alarm would have gone off, so I shut it off so as not to annoy other sleeping people.

    Easy, when it's set to 8 PM...