Contributed by Elias Malek, Ph.D.
The truth about phone use before bed: it’s not what you’re viewing, it’s how hooked you are.
“Put your phone down one hour before bed”, “use blue light blocking glasses”, “banish screens from the bedroom entirely!” If you’ve tried to improve your sleep by changing your pre-bed phone use habits, you’ve probably heard it all. But what if you’ve been focusing on the wrong thing?
Eight Sleep’s latest research on 240+ adult members revealed a few important insights about phone use within the hour before bed.
Key takeaways
- Participants who looked at news-related content within the hour before bed had 2% less REM sleep vs. when viewing other content types (e.g. social media, short-form video, long-form video, and audio-based content).
- Participants who viewed attention-grabbing content before bed had 12 minutes less total sleep time on average compared to nights when viewing less engaging content.
- Surprisingly, sleep quality didn’t change based on what participants watched, how long they were on their phones, or how the content made them feel—it was purely how much the content grabbed their attention.
We analyzed phone use habits and sleep in 248 participants who opted-in to the study, totaling 1,700 nights
To understand whether phone use within the hour before bed impacts sleep metrics, we studied 248 Eight Sleep adult members who regularly use their phone within one hour before bed. Each night before bed, after using their phones but before falling asleep, participants filled out a survey where we asked the following questions:
- What type of content did you consume? (social media, news, work, gaming, etc.)
- How long did you view the content? (1-15min, 16-30min, 31-45min, 46-60min, 60+ min)
- What emotion was associated with that content consumption? (anger, joy, anxiety, etc.)
- How engaging was the content? (1-9 scale, how much the content held your attention)
We paired these nightly surveys with objective sleep data from the Pod: heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), sleep stages, and total sleep time.
Viewing news-related content before bed negatively impacts your sleep
Viewing news content before bed for any duration resulted in 2.1% lower REM sleep compared to other content types, such as audio content, long-form video, short-form video, and social media (Figure 1). There were no other differences in sleep metrics, HR, or HRV across any of the 12 content types. So aside from viewing news-related content before bed, other content types do not appear to impact sleep quality.
Figure 1. Content type effects on nightly percentage of REM sleep. The bars show the average percentage of total sleep spent in REM sleep for each content type that was viewed within 1 hour of bed (regardless of viewing duration). Error bars represent standard error of the mean. The vertical axis shows REM sleep as a percentage of total sleep time, while the horizontal axis lists the different content categories participants viewed before bed. *Indicates statistical significance (p<0.05).
Viewing higher attention-grabbing content before bed reduces total sleep time
We asked members to rate how engaging or attention-grabbing their phone content was on a 1-9 scale. We then grouped these ratings into three categories: low (1-3), medium (4-6), and high attention (7-9). Participants who reported their content to be higher attention levels slept 12 minutes less per night on average than people who reported low attention levels (Figure 2). Over one week, this translates to almost 1.5 fewer hours of sleep. Interestingly, we found that this was true whether people viewed this attention-grabbing content for just 5 minutes or spent an entire hour on the content.
You may be wondering, did the members who reported consuming low-engagement content simply go to bed earlier? Yes, they did. Members who viewed low attention-level content went to bed 25 minutes earlier than those who consumed high attention-level content. In other words, the more attention-grabbing the content, the more likely participants were to stay up later than usual and therefore get less total sleep.
Figure 2. How attention level impacts total sleep time. Each bar represents the average hours of sleep participants got on nights when they reported low vs. high levels of attention with phone content. Error bars represent standard error of the mean. The horizontal axis represents the engagement level participants reported after viewing the content (low, medium, or high), and the vertical axis represents the total sleep time per night in hours. *Indicates statistical significance (p<0.05).
We’re going deeper in our understanding of how phones impact your sleep
Our findings challenge the conventional wisdom regarding bedtime screen use. While limiting screen time before bed is not bad advice, our study suggests that what you should pay more attention to is the kind of content you consume right before bedtime – and this may also be true to content consumed on television.
What our findings mean for your bedtime routine
- Avoid news in the hour before sleep. It’s the most disruptive to REM sleep, reducing it by 2-4 percentage points per night.
- Across one week, this could mean losing 70 minutes of REM sleep, which is a sleep stage critical for memory, learning, and emotional regulation.
- Pick content that does not grab your attention: this might mean listening to a calming podcast, audiobook, or even scrolling through light social content. If the content makes you more alert, swap it out for something less engaging.
Bottom line: The next time you reach for your phone before bed, remember, it’s not just about putting it down; it’s about being mindful of how you’re interacting with the content. Choose wisely, and you’ll sleep more and better for it.
