A study of more than 45,000 Norwegian university students has shown that using screens in bed is strongly associated with insomnia symptoms and lower sleep duration. Researchers suspect that this is because screen time displaces sleep by taking up time when people would otherwise be resting. However, using social media was not found to be more harmful than other forms of screen use.
A large part of this are going to be insomniacs who are using media because they can’t sleep. Evidently that’s a feedback loop, but it’s not as unidirectional as the headline and abstract suggests.
They could have had them not use a screen for some parts of the study and use it for others, but after reading the article and skimming the paper I can’t see any indication they did this. It seems they just sent out a survey to 45k people and concluded people who use their phones in bed go to sleep later so that must be the cause.
Yep, I try to sleep, and after maybe 20 minutes or longer I go look at my phone for a bit to get tired, or watch some video. That actually makes me fall asleep most of the time, so maybe screen use reduces insomnia and people are just self-medicating 🤔
key thing here is you tried to sleep first
I’ve started to sometimes go straight to watching a video and actually fall asleep faster this way most of the time
But are people on their phone since they can’t sleep? Or can’t they sleep because they’re on their phone?
This lol.
“Exercise makes you live longer” or, “those who are healthier are more able to exercise (and also live longer because they are healthier).”
It annoys me we still have literal scientists assuming correlation is causation without much critical thinking.
But strong findings = more citations, and more citations = more career prospects, so the system isn’t really designed to incentivise rigorousness.
Ah, the chicken and egg problem of the modern age.
Tell this to my fiancee, who scrolls reels for an hour before falling asleep in minutes every night.
Meanwhile, if I have 0.001mg too much caffeine I’m not sleeping til Friday
Hrm.
It doesn’t look like they actually differentiated or isolated… basically listening to something like a history podcast or relaxation, ambient audio track, with no actual visual component… unless I’m missing something.
I very often have trouble getting to fall asleep without… some kind of calm, soothing audio.
With something like that, I’m usually out cold within 15 minutes.
Without it, I can stay awake for hours past the time I actually want to go to sleep.
I’ll just play it over speakers at a low volume, or use earbuds.
I mean, that’s an hour less sleep right?
AFTER going to bed? What are you going to bed for if you’re fucking around on your phone?
Thanks for sharing
