Most Americans Sleep with Cell Phones

Most American adults spend every waking moment connected…. and every nonwakeful moment it turns out. A Pew survey shows two-thirds of Americans sleep with their cell phones in their bed or on a nightstand.

The set-up leads to a lot of late-night texting, talking or web surfing if it’s a smartphone. It’s bad sleep hygiene that could be promoting insomnia.

A now infamous report the Sleep Education Blog covered on in spring shows the bright screen from the Apple iPad makes sleep more difficult. Many outlets at the time claimed the device caused insomnia, a claim that is untrue.

Research shows the bright blue and green light emitted from the screen of modern electronic devices, whether it’s a cell phone or a television, can alter the natural human circadian process by preventing the body from secreting melatonin.

Then there is the issue of text messages. Teens are notorious for staying up late in their bedroom texting with their friends. The behavior may carry on to adulthood for some people. The Pew study shows heavy and medium texters are more likely to sleep with their phone. Readers can draw their own conclusions on what this group is doing from bed.

There are of course valid excuses to keep your cell phone in the bedroom, such as being an on-call worker. Cell phones also make good alarm clocks. Make sure to turn off the sound for email alerts if you’re using a smartphone, or risk plenty of unwelcome awakenings.

Why iPhone and Droid Aren't Smart for the Bedroom

Smartphones more than ever are capturing the hearts of American consumers. Look at most tech blogs these days and you’ll find a vast number of articles are about Apple’s iPhone 4 or Google's latest Android phone. It’s not hard to see why. The modern “super phone” does it all; it’s a phone, a computer and an entertainment system rolled into a handheld device.

Just don’t bring these devices into the bedroom. Smartphones are smaller, but functionally similar to the supposedly insomnia-causing iPad.

Obviously that story reported by countless news outlets in April was a bit overblown. iPads, smartphones or computers with bright screens won’t cause insomnia outright, but they can be detrimental to your sleep.

If you’re familiar with the concepts of sleep hygiene you would know that bright screens can prevent you from feeling tired. The blue and green light emitted from the screen can alter the natural human circadian process by preventing the body from secreting melatonin. Sleep hygiene also advise against using your bedroom for activities other than sleep and sex.

Going against both of these recommendations by using your iPhone in bed is a recipe for disaster, right? Not necessarily. Some people can get away with using smartphones in bed without the slightest change in sleep. It’s kind of like how some people prefer to fall asleep with the television on.

The Sleep Education Blog of course doesn’t advocate either practice. We recommend turning off all electronic devices at least a half hour before bed, especially if you typically have a difficult time falling asleep. Try reading a book, listening to music or a podcast or doing light chores around your home instead.

Even your run-of-the-mill cell phone may interfere with sleep. Parents complain teens and young adults may stay up too late texting or talking to friends. Some studies have gone so far as to suggest the radio frequency field can alter your sleep architecture just by keeping your cell phone on the nightstand. Other studies have reported no such effects.

Because there are so many conflicting reports, we don’t know exactly what kind of other effects cell phones have on our sleeping patterns. So maybe it’s best just to be safe and leave cell phones and smartphones out of the bedroom.

Twitter: Sleep & Tweets

You can learn a lot about a person in 140 characters or less. You can learn a lot about their sleep too.Twitter let’s you answer the question, “What’s happening?” The Web site at www.sleepingtime.org has responded by asking, “When do they sleep?”

The one-click site simply asks you to provide the username of a person who is on Twitter. Then in a second the site’s algorithm will analyze the timing of hundreds of that user’s tweets.

It will identify the time of day when the user is least active on Twitter. From this activity analysis it calculates the hours when the person is more likely to sleep.

The site was developed by Amit Agarwal, a personal technology columnist in India. He writes the Digital Inspiration blog and is on Twitter as @labnol.

So when does Amit sleep? According to sleepingtime, he typically gets about seven hours of shut-eye from 1 a.m. to 8 a.m. in the New Delhi time zone.

Amit also used the site to compile estimated sleep times for some “Tech Superstars.” For example, sleepingtime determined that Bill Gates is more likely to get eight hours of sleep from midnight to 8 a.m.

Last year the Sleep Education blog reported that there can be little time for White House staffers to sleep. What does sleepingtime say?

It reports that @whitehouse is more likely to sleep for eight hours from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. And @barackobama is more likely to sleep for seven hours between 1 a.m. and 8 a.m.

So it’s not an exact science. But if you use Twitter regularly, the site can give you a quick snapshot of your typical “sleep window.”

After all, you can’t tweet in your sleep. Or can you?

Episodes of sleepwalking can involve routine behaviors such as making phone calls. Last year a case report even described a woman who sent some strange e-mails while she was asleep.

But sleeptweeting? It’s possible. And it’s another good reason to keep your cell phone away from your bed at night.

Sleep, Millennials & Cell Phones

The Pew Research Center has been studying American teens and twenty-somethings. This week it released a new report: “Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next.”

The report is based on a survey of 2,020 U.S. adults. It included an oversample of 830 Millennials between the ages of 18 and 29 years.

It should come as no surprise that these young adults are surrounded by digital technology. The report calls them history’s first “always connected” generation.

“Steeped in digital technology and social media, they treat their multi-tasking hand-held gadgets almost like a body part,” stated the report.

The survey even asked: “Have you ever placed your cell phone on or right next to your bed while sleeping?” About 83 percent of Millennials reported sleeping next to their phones.

In January another report found that the percentage of students who owned a cell phone had increased from 39 percent to 66 percent. Is this technology affecting the sleep of Millennials?

Last year the Sleep Education Blog reported on recent studies. Research shows that frequent cell phone use may cause a number of sleep problems.

Read more about sleep and technology.

Is Your Cell Phone Keeping You Awake at Night?

You may think that you can’t live without your cell phone. But maybe you’d sleep better without it.

A study from Sweden in 2008 involved 21 healthy subjects between the ages of 14 and 20. They were divided into two groups.

A control group used their cell phones for no more than five calls or text messages per day. The other group used their phones for more than 15 calls or text messages per day. One of these participants had more than 200 text messages per day. Only one of the 21 subjects turned the phone off at night.

Results show that people with excessive cell phone use had a number of sleep problems. They had irregular sleeping hours and took longer to fall asleep.

Their sleep was more agitated, and they woke up more often. It took them longer to reach the stage of deep sleep. They also had more trouble waking up in the morning and were more tired before mid-day.

In 2007 a study in the journal Sleep found that teens who use cell phones after “lights out” are more likely to be tired one year later. The odds of being “very tired” were 3.3 times higher for those who used the cell phone at any time of night.

But it’s not just the time spent on the phone that can hinder your sleep. The cell phone itself – or your exposure to its radio frequency field - may affect your sleep.

One study in 2007 involved 36 women and 35 men. They were exposed to three hours of an 884 MHz wireless signal.

After exposure it took participants longer to reach the stage of deep sleep. They also spent less time in deep sleep.

But another study in 2007 failed to find similar results. Ten subjects were exposed to a defined radiofrequency electromagnetic field. They did not find a significant effect on sleep.

Another study in 2006 exposed 55 volunteers to cell phone emissions for 30 minutes. There was no impact on melatonin production. But there may be an effect on the timing of melatonin production. The body produces more melatonin at night as a "sleep signal."

So it remains unclear how and how much cell phones may affect your sleep. But it may be best to turn your phone off and keep it out of the bedroom at night. Sleep without it, even if you can’t live without it.

Will Smarter Phones Make Us Better Sleepers?

With iTunes and an iPhone, you can do much more than download Soulja Boy’s latest hit song. Some application developers are even hoping the iPhone will help you sleep better.

Developer Mark Cooke and composer Norihiko Hibino worked together to create “Prescription for Sleep.” They describe it as “a music visualizer that is intended to act as a sleep aid.” It combines “soothing imagery and therapeutic music” to help you fall asleep.



The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that two college students won a $10,000 prize for developing “Proactive Sleep.” It analyzes your sleep cycle to determine the best time to wake you up in the morning.

After waking you up it uses a game to test your alertness and reaction time. Poor performance indicates that you woke up from a stage of deep sleep. Performing well is a sign that you woke up from a stage of light sleep.

The program uses this information to “learn” more about your sleep cycle. This helps it predict when to wake you up on the days that follow.

The Washington Post reports that a “White Noise” application offers 40 sounds to soothe you to sleep. You can choose the sound of ocean waves, chirping crickets or even a humming air conditioner.

But is all of this necessary? Do we need more gadgets and programs to help us sleep? Or do we just need to get back to the basic habits of sleeping well?

What do you think - is new technology hindering our sleep? Or does it offer new ways to help us sleep better?

Come back tomorrow to learn about studies that examine whether or not cell phones have a negative impact on our sleep.