Sleeping Next To Your Mobile Device is a Terrible Idea And Here’s Why…

If you go to sleep with your cell phone near your bed, you’re not alone. More and more people are taking their gadgets with them when they tuck themselves in at night – especially since the advent of smartphones. But there’s a good reason to resist the temptation to take your phone to bed with you, even if it means missing a few late-night texts.

Cell Phones: The Risks And Benefits

Cell phones are increasingly being used not just as communication devices, but as a form of assistive technology – cell phones can help you keep track of your appointments and other daily activities, and studies have shown that they can help reduce stress and promote socially supportive behavior(1).

But there’s a downside to cell phone use.

As this relatively new technology develops and people become increasingly dependent on it, cell phone use also complicates our lives – facilitating negative and stressful interactions like cyberbullying, causing cell phone addiction, and even resulting in sleep disorders.

“Cell phones offer historically unique opportunities for maintaining unrestricted and spontaneous contact with others,” one team of researchers writes(2).

“However, like any other phenomenon, there appear to be some potential psychosocial risks with cell phones. These risk include the personal stress of responding to and maintaining unrestricted and immediate contact with others; possible sleep disturbances related to the anticipation of use after lights out, feeling keyed up after cell phone conversations, and/or biologically mediated changes in sleep structure related to the electromagnetic fields generated by cell phones; the facilitation of cyberbullying; and overuse/misuse.”

Are Cell Phones Disturbing Your Sleep?

One of the easiest things to quantify with the advent of cell phone technology has been their effect on our sleep – and the effect isn’t good, most studies seem to conclude.

One prospective cohort study linked cell phone use among young adults not just to sleep disturbances, but to depression and anxiety as well(3).

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