Does Screen Time Reduce Sleep Time?

BALTIMORE—Sleeping with a bed partner’s smartphone notifications within earshot relates to daytime sleepiness. Insomnia symptoms and sleep duration may explain associations between technology use and depressive symptoms in teens. Among students, nighttime cell phone use reduces the likelihood of getting at least eight hours of sleep per night and increases the likelihood of receiving hurtful messages.

Those were among the findings from three studies about technology use and sleep that researchers presented at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies. The results suggest possible interventions such as education and regulating screen time to improve patients’ sleep and overall health, investigators said.

Screen Time, Depressive Symptoms, and Sleep

“Although screen-based activities, insomnia symptoms, and insufficient sleep are known risk factors for adolescent depressive symptoms, limited research has investigated whether sleep mediates the association between screen time and depressive symptoms,” said Xian Stella Li, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at Stony Brook University in New York, and colleagues.

To examine how screen activities are associated with depressive symptoms and how sleep mediates these associations, Dr. Li and colleagues analyzed data from 2,865 participants (51% male) in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study’s teen survey. Participants completed the survey at age 15 and reported problems falling asleep, problems staying asleep, and habitual weeknight sleep duration, as well as depressive symptoms. They also reported the typical daily time spent on four screen-based activities—social messaging, web surfing, watching TV or movies, and gaming. The investigators constructed a multiple mediation model to examine associations between screen time, insomnia symptoms and sleep duration, and depressive symptoms. Covariates included gender, age, race, family structure and income, and primary caregiver’s education.

For social messaging, web surfing, and watching TV or movies, “insomnia symptoms and sleep duration fully mediated the association between screen activities and depressive symptoms,” the researchers said. Furthermore, all four types of screen-based activities “have significant associations with teens’ depressive symptoms mediated by insomnia symptoms and sleep duration.”

Lauren Hale, PhD

“These results suggest that parents, educators, and health care professionals could consider educating adolescents and regulating their screen time as possible interventions for improving sleep health and reducing depression,” said Lauren Hale, PhD, Professor of Family, Population, and Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University and the study’s principal investigator.

Can a Bed Partner’s Phone Affect Daytime Sleepiness?

Studies have found that the use of interactive social technology around bedtime is related to difficulty falling asleep, unrefreshing sleep, and nighttime awakenings. At the same time, “evidence suggests that bed partners can play a role in the onset and maintenance of insomnia” and that “sleep problems might better be treated as a couple-level phenomenon,” said David F. Mastin, PhD, Professor of Psychology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and colleagues.

To examine whether a bed partner’s passive social technology use is a useful addition to the Sleep Hygiene Index, Dr. Mastin and colleagues analyzed data from 220 introductory psychology students (mean age, 20.1). Participants completed the Epworth Sleepiness Scale, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and the Sleep Hygiene Index. “For this study, three additional questions were added [to the Sleep Hygiene Index], two assessing self-bedtime social technology use (active and passive) and one assessing partner (passive) use (ie, I sleep with my bed partner’s phone sounds or vibrations turned on where I could hear them if I were awake).”

In addition, participants indicated how frequently they experienced daytime sleepiness, preoccupation with sleep, mood disturbance, avolition (ie, decreased motivation), and impaired cognition.

Many students frequently or always used social technology at bedtime themselves (60% actively and 64% passively) or were able to hear a partner’s social technology at bedtime (35%).

“Both self and partner social technology use during sleep time were associated with greater daytime sleepiness,” the researchers said. In addition, six of the of the 13 original sleep hygiene items, as well as passive, active, and partner technology use, significantly correlated with greater daytime sleepiness. “The addition of self-use sleep-time technology items strengthened the correlation between the Sleep Hygiene Index and daytime sleepiness, and the addition of partner sleep-time technology use strengthened it even further,” Dr. Mastin and colleagues said. “We suggest social technology use in a dyadic context is an important new aspect of understanding sleep hygiene. Future research should investigate whether bed partner active social technology use similarly disrupts sleep.”