When you wake up in the morning, you probably reach over for your phone.
Whether you’re checking your texts, Facebook or Whatsapp, you might just take a few minutes to catch up with what you’ve missed.
Maybe you open a few Snapchats on your coffee break, or check Instagram on the commute home from work?
What we’re trying to say is, you’ve likely been tapping in and out of apps and messages on your smartphone all day.
Well new research from the University of Pittsburgh has surveyed the relationship for more than 1,700 adults between using their smartphones and their daily social media use, and it seems being that connected could be keeping you up at night.
When evaluating the answers and the sleep quality of respondents, researchers found that those who were attached to their phone (and regularly checked in on their social media apps) were three times more likely to suffer from disturbed sleep patterns.
The findings also proved that the more often you checked your phone, the more likely you were to suffer with breaks to your sleep.
While the team behind the study acknowledged that social media can be an aid of entertainment to those who suffer from sleep issues, Dr. Jessica Levenson added:
“This may indicate that frequency of social media visits is a better predictor of sleep difficulty than overall time spent on social media.
“If this is the case, then interventions that counter obsessive ‘checking’ behaviour may be most effective.”
If you do have trouble nodding off, most sleep experts recommend switching off all technology one hour before bedtime so your brain has time to ‘switch off’ from that screen time.
