Here’s How Your Mobile Device Is Impacting Your Sleep

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Trouble sleeping is a problem for many of us. As we struggle to stay awake at our desks and complain to our friends, we fail to examine why we can’t get a full night’s sleep. As much as we don’t want to hear it, it’s very likely that your mobile devices could be causing your insatiable craving for caffeine and puffy red eyes.

According to Ofcom, eight out of ten people keep their cellphones on and close by as they sleep, and approximately half of us use our phones as an alarm clock. Unfortunately, research has shown that sleeping near your phone, or using a mobile device before sleeping, can impact your quality of sleep.

In recent years, numerous studies have found that mobile devices affect the quality and length of our sleep, inhibiting the body’s capacity to rejuvenate and repair itself. At a basic level, smartphones make us “hypervigilant” – increasing the chance of disturbed sleep, but they can also trigger other sleeping problems such as insomnia.

Mobile Devices & Sleep Disorders

Human beings sleep in a five stage cycle, and each phase performs a different function and is essential for overall wellbeing and health. The first two stages of sleep are lighter, non-REM periods, while the third and fourth stages are deeper phases of sleep where the body begins to repair muscle, bone, and skin. During the last stage – REM, activity in the brain increases, memory restores and improves, and dreams become more vivid.

According to scientists, the extensive popularity of mobile devices could cause a huge leap in sleep disorders, due to the fact that the light emitted from digital screens can impact the body clock. Research has found that using your mobile device for as little as two hours before sleeping can cause significant problems.

The bright lights produced on high-quality modern phones interfere with the natural rhythm of the body, tricking our brains into believing that it’s still daytime. The light stimulates the cells within the retina – the area of the eye that transmits information to the brain – informing us of what time it is. This process controls the release of the waking hormone, cortisol, and the sleeping hormone, melatonin. According to the recent study conducted by the Lighting Research Center, a two-hour exposure to light from mobile devices can suppress melatonin production by as much as 22%.

The research team involved in the study at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute exposed thirteen individuals to self-luminous devices before sleep. The suppression values for melatonin after 60 minutes weren’t deemed significant, but after two hours, the exposure had left a measurable effect.

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