How many hours of sleep does looking at your phone before bed steal from you?

BarcelonaLack of sleep affects our mental and physical health. Disorders such as insomnia, apnea, and narcolepsy affect the daily lives of those who suffer from them, as a series of essential processes occur while we sleep. More and more people are accustomed to using screens in bed before going to sleep, which disrupts our sleep and, by extension, our health. A study by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health has determined that using a cell phone one hour before bedtime increases the risk of insomnia by 59% and reduces sleep time by almost half an hour each night, about 24 minutes. These are the conclusions published this Monday by the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry.

Researchers believe that screen use before bed affects sleep in four different ways: notifications interrupt rest, screen time replaces sleep time, screen activities keep us awake and make it take longer to fall asleep, and light exposure. According to the authors of this study, "screens reduce sleep time by displacing rest, not by increasing wakefulness." This was determined after conducting a survey of 45,202 young people between 18 and 28 years old in Norway.

Gunnhild Johnsen, the author of the study, explains that "sleep problems are very common among students and have important implications for mental health, academic performance, and general well-being." Therefore, and seeing that screen use in bed is increasingly widespread, they investigated the relationship between the different activities they did with their phones before bed and their sleep patterns. However, the authors clarify that these findings cannot determine whether screen use causes insomnia or whether students with insomnia use screens more.

Social networks

One of the hypotheses the study authors were working with was that social media could be associated with poorer quality sleep, since it's interactive and can be more stimulating. Therefore, they asked participants if and for how long they used screens after bed, as well as their preferred activities. The goal was to see if there were differences between watching TV shows or movies, playing video games, using social media, browsing the internet, listening to podcasts, or reading study materials, among others.

However, they observed that social media use is no more harmful than other screen-based activities. "We found no significant differences between social media and other screen-based activities, suggesting that screen use itself is the key factor in sleep disruption," explains the author of the study. That's why the expert advises against using your phone before bed: "If you have trouble sleeping and suspect that screen use may be a factor, try to reduce your screen use in bed; ideally, you should stop using it 30 to 60 minutes before bedtime," she suggests.