Where many of us find it difficult to keep away from our smartphone right before sleeping, a new study has revealed that keeping your smartphone out of your bedroom can increase your happiness and can improve your mental health. Recently, a research published in Computers in Human Behavior, examined what happened after a group of people agreed to temporarily stop the use of smartphone use in the bedroom.
For the study, the researchers took 95 participants — 49 of them were asked to not use their phone in their bedroom for one week straight. The remaining 46 were used as a control group and required to continuing using their phones as normal.
The participants who abstained using their smartphone showed small improvements to happiness and quality of life after a week. Most of the participants (74.5%) who slept without their phone said they would consider continuing to do so.
The author of the research Nicola Hughes of the University of East London said:
“I got my first iPhone about 4 years ago. Before that, I had been using a Blackberry, which was barely connected to the internet and wasn’t greatly suited to apps, websites, etc. I used it essentially only for calls, text messages and the occasional email. I could see that other people were spending more and more time on their phones, but I didn’t understand it.
Then I got my iPhone — then I got Whatsapp, Instagram, 3G, 4G and so on. Before I knew it, the phone had become the source of an ever-present, constant, ongoing conversation with everyone in my life and an endless stream of content which was always beckoning for my attention.”
“Eventually, I read an article where the author had started charging her phone in the lounge at night so as to keep her bedroom a ‘sanctuary’ from the invasion of tech,” Hughes explained. “This gave me the idea for my study, to test whether there would be any real, measurable impacts (for good or bad) to limiting tech use in the bedroom and creating space for more offline time.”
Many of the participants told the researchers that leaving their smartphones out of the bedroom improved their sleep, reduced anxiety, improved their relationships, and prevented them from wasting time. However, these factors were not scientifically measured.
Although, we’re living in a tech-obsessed world and you hear it time and time again: we need to put our smartphones away especially when we’re getting ready for bed. We all know it’s a bad habit to get into but now there’s science-based research that proves that looking at your smartphone in bed is a certified horrible idea that can affect your brain and body both.
How many of you keep checking and scrolling your smartphone after hitting the bed? Let us know in the comments below.
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