People Can Sleep Better if They Use Screens for Certain Content: New Research Claims

Recent studies have debunked the myth that watching screens before going to bed disturbs the quality or duration of sleep. The research indicates some people may get more rest by watching something before going to sleep, depending on their use of digital devices.

Previous research linked all kinds of digital media consumption with disrupted sleep patterns suggesting users abstain from screens for an hour before sleeping.

Past studies have found digital screen time before bed can be associated with poor sleep. Device usage before sleeping was considered to be a single homogenous activity, which often ignored the complicated variety in which people use digital media. Moreover, most studies make use of self-reported sleep diaries that happen to be notoriously unreliable.

The Journal of Sleep Research published the study, trying to analyze some of the different ways users use social media around bedtime and how this use can influence the quality of our sleep.

The research included 58 adult participants and tasked them with self-reporting their social media use an hour before going to sleep every night. The type of media consumed by the participants such as television, podcast, book, etc., were recorded along with where they were using the media such as in bed or the lounge room, and whether they were multitasking their usage, e.g. scrolling through their phone while watching television and other similar activities.

The participants were trained on how to use an electroencephalography (EEG) machine at home, allowing for more detailed insights into sleep quality.

Unlike many other self-reported types of research, the study allows for far more detailed insights into sleep quality.

A researcher on the study, Lindsay Hahn from the University at Buffalo, said that the main focus of this particular study was to investigate how different types of traditional media influence sleep.

The researchers claimed that they were more interested in understanding whether passively watching or listening to something directly before bed disrupted sleep quality.

Hahn reported:

We intentionally looked only at what you might call ‘entertainment media. Despite social media getting a lot of attention both in research circles and in popular culture, American time-use surveys show that people still spend a lot of time with television, music, and books.

The researchers found that sleep quality was unaffected by media use in the hour before bed. An unexpected find reported by the researchers found that the total sleep time was improved with media use before sleep. Hahn pointed out sleep can be improved or harmed by the type of media consumed.

Hahn also added:

We found that media use just prior to the onset of sleep is associated with an earlier bedtime and more total sleep time, as long as the duration of use is relatively short and you’re not multitasking, like texting or simultaneously scrolling social media. Watching a streaming service or listening to a podcast before bed can serve as a passive, calming activity that improves aspects of your sleep.

She concluded that her team’s findings indicate there may be some benefits to media use before sleep, stating:

These results show the potential benefits of media use and point to the possibility of interventions that allow for media use before bed in ways that improve rather than disrupt sleep. People tend to worry a lot about media use affecting their health or well-being, but our findings repeatedly show that media use can be good for us, too.

The lead author of the study, Morgan Ellithorpe from the University of Delaware, stated that the longer the people used media in bed, the more it led to negative effects on sleep. The researcher further commented:

If you are going to use media, like watching TV or listening to music, before bed, keep it a short, focused session and you are unlikely to experience any negative outcomes in your sleep that night.

Another study posted in Sleep Medicine investigated the effect of social media use on sleep quality. The research used a more accurate form of sleep tracking, with 32 participants spending four nights in a sleep laboratory.

The study found that using social media for 30 minutes before sleeping had no effects on any measures of sleep quality as compared to the control conditions. While significant improvements were detected in objective and subjective measures on the night the volunteers listened to a 30-minute relaxation exercise.

The social media sleep study concluded:

Delaying bedtime due to prolonged media use might have additional impairing effects on sleep and on the duration of sleep going beyond the findings of this study, especially if we consider when wake-up times are externally determined by school hours or working schedules.

The two pieces of research compliment a larger investigation by Andrew Przybylski in 2018 at the University of Oxford. The research analyzed the self-reported relationship between sleep and screen use in children. The study majorly focused on the correlation between total daily screen time and sleep duration in 50, 000 children.

The report claims:

The findings suggest that the relationship between sleep and screen use in children is extremely modest. Every hour of screen time was related to 3 to 8 fewer minutes of sleep a night.

Despite the research indicating some screen use may not be harmful to sleep there has been plenty of recent research suggesting the opposite. It is, however, still unclear whether the use of social media before bed affects sleep quality or consumption of digital media reduces overall sleep time, as science struggles to reach a consensus on the topic.