Impact of Different Pre-Sleep Phone use Patterns on Sleep Quality

Abstract

As the economy progresses and new technology emerges, more people are struggling with sleep-related difficulties. Researchers have previously identified that smartphone use may be associated with poor sleep quality. However, smartphones have become an indispensable part of modern life. Therefore, it is important to investigate the potential impacts of smartphone use patterns on an individual's health. In this paper, we investigate sleep quality variations between two sets of pre-sleep phone use patterns: phone use before bed-time and phone use during bed-time (before sleep). Our analysis, based on a multi-year mobile crowdsensed data collection effort on more than 400 college students, shows significant sleep quality variations when a phone is used in either of these two usage patterns compared to when it is not used. However, the results also show that phone use during bed-time leads to a significantly worse sleep quality. We expect that these findings will be useful for individuals, public authorities, and smartphone developers to improve smartphone users' sleep quality.