Technology has grown rapidly in the past couple decades and has been embedded in the lives of many, be it young or old. In particular, smartphones have snuck their way into the hands and pockets of many, with the apparent need for them increasing as people discover more ways to integrate it into our daily lives. An increase in daily phone usage has sparked an interest in research surrounding the negative implications of overuse and addiction. A study by Nikolic et al. (2023) investigated a population of 761 medical students, observing the relationship between smartphone addiction and sleep quality. Smartphone addiction was measured using the Smartphone Addiction Scale which include various items that participants rate from 1 to 6, 1 being strongly disagree and 6 being strongly agree. Participant’s sleep quality was measured using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, which is a questionnaire including 24 questions used to measure various parameters regarding sleep quality. Of the 761 students, 165 of them were deemed as having a smartphone addiction. It was found that of those categorised as addicted to smartphones, 50.9% reported good sleep quality. This was significantly less than the non-addicted population, 63.1% of which reported good sleep quality. Hence, the study found that individuals who were addicted to their smartphones had a higher risk of having worse sleep quality. The nature of this observation is associative, so more research needs to be conducted in order to solidify the findings of this paper. However, it does highlight something that all of us should keep in mind when it comes to our own phone usage and taking care of our sleep.
Reference:
Nikolic, A. et al. (2023) ‘Smartphone addiction, sleep quality, depression, anxiety, and stress among medical students’, Frontiers in Public Health, 11. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2023.1252371.
