Full disclosure: by day, I work for a company that specializes in sleep medicine, which is why this article is so close to my heart and why I think it’s important to share it.
A study just published on BMJ Open has uncovered an unhealthy link between excessive use of smartphones (and technology with screens in general) and issues during your sleep, particularly for adolescents. The study was quite a big one including 10,000 16 to 19 year-olds in Norway and explored the relationship between smartphone use during the day and night and how it impacted sleep measures.
Unsurprisingly, the study found a strong link between the two, citing that adolescents who used their devices for at least five hours during the day would be three and a half times more likely to sleep less than five hours, and 49% of the time needed more time than usual to fall asleep at night. More generally, these factors sometimes ended up manifesting as sleeping disorders, obesity, poor performance at school, and poorer life choices involving drugs and alcohol.
And don’t fool yourself into thinking this only affects adolescents – this study just accentuates how much smartphones are affecting us and our children, particularly during this immensely important growth period in young adults.
What do you think about the correlation between the excessive use of smartphones and sleeping issues.
