Put the Phone Down: Smartphone Screen Time Leads to Lower Sleep Quality, Study Says

Are you always using your phone before sleeping? Tonight, before you hit the bed, try putting your phone down. According to a new research, smartphone screen time before bed leads to poor sleep quality.

The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, says that exposure to smartphone screens is linked to poor quality of sleep. Matthew Christen, from the University of California and lead author of the study, and his colleagues tested this theory by analyzing data from 653 people accross the US, who are participants of the Health eHeart Study.

To test their theory, Christen and his team installed an app on the participants' smartphones which can track their screen time. The study, which lasted for 30 days, also recorded sleeping hours and quality.

Results showed that each participant's avergae screen time is 38.4 hours or 3.7 minutes per hour. Meanwhile, participants who had a longer average screen time said that the lack of sleep, which may cause diabetes and poor sleep/

Even though the study needs to be further enhanced in the future, this new knowledge reaffirms other past studies showing the bad effects of using phones before bedtime.

“There’s growing evidence that poor sleep quality is not simply associated with difficulty concentrating and being in a bad mood the next day but may be a really important risk factor to multiple diseases," said says Dr. Gregory Marcus, one of the study’s authors and director of clinical research for the division of cardiology at University of California, San Francisco as per TIME.

To learn more on how phones and other technology contribute in poor sleep, check out the video below.

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