A habit a lot of us have is keeping us from getting the sleep we desperately need. You’ve heard it before, but a new study is proving just how bad scrolling through our phones in bed really is for our sleep. Scientists in Norway have found that using a screen in bed at night makes it a lot more likely we’ll sleep less and poorly.
For the study, researchers surveyed more than 45-thousand young adults about their screen time habits at bedtime and found:
- You don’t even have to stay up late or scroll for hours at a time to interfere with snoozing.
- Using a phone or laptop in bed for just one hour slashes sleep time by 24 minutes.
- It also raises the risk of insomnia by 59%.
- The activity people do on their screens doesn’t affect the amount of time they stay awake, it’s the overall amount of time spent on screens that matters.
- It turns out, screen use reduces sleep time because it takes up time we’d otherwise spend resting, not because it makes us more awake and alert.
“We found no significant differences between social media and other screen activities, suggesting that screen use itself is the key factor in sleep disruption,” study authors explain. They advise anyone who struggles to sleep to stop looking at their phones at least 30 minutes before getting into bed and disabling notifications to minimize disruptions overnight.
Source: Talker