Maintaining healthy sleep habits are crucial for a good night’s sleep. Unfortunately, a lot of us don’t quite achieve these habits on a daily basis. Phone use before bed time is one of the most common bad habits to do prior to bed due to the phone’s content and the phone’s screen light, which can both have a negative effect on the quality of sleep and how long it’ll take you to actually fall asleep. This phone usage is classed as bedtime procrastination (BP) which is defined as going to bed later than intended despite any reason not to.
A recent study enlisted 106 young adults who were classified as either high BP (n=54) or low BP (n=52) based on the Bedtime Procrastination Scale. They were also required to complete questionnaires on insomnia, depression, anxiety, stress, chronotype, and keep a 7-day sleep diary while completing time use surveys over 48 hours. Results showed that those individuals in the high bedtime procrastination group reported significantly more depression, anxiety, insomnia, went to bed later, woke later, and engage in more evening activities, both leisure and social, when compared to individuals in the low bedtime procrastination group. Specifically for phone usage, those in the high bedtime procrastination group spent approximately 451% more time (roughly 61 minutes) per day on their phone three hours prior to bed time compared to those in the low bedtime procrastination group.
These results highlight a very real issue in today’s society: an over reliance on our phones which is negatively impacting on multiple facets of our lives: both general well-being and sleep quality. There have been multiple ways one can combat these negative effects by using the warm light feature on the phone, limiting usage prior to bed, or even putting the phone on charge in another room, outside of the bedroom.
