This Bedtime Phone Habit Steals Sleep, Damages Your Brain

Adults regularly doomscrolling the phone before bed might be losing nearly an hour of sleep each week and damaging their brains, a new study has highlighted. Published in the journal JAMA Network on Thursday (Mar 27), researchers from the American Cancer Society found that daily screen use may disrupt the body's circadian rhythm and lead to about 50 minutes of less sleep each week.

More than 122,000 participants were analysed in the study, conducted between February 2023 and January 2025. Daily bedtime phone use was reported in 41 per cent of the participants while 17.4 per cent reported no screen use.

Compared to participants with no screen use, the daily screen use period to bed was associated with a 33 per cent higher prevalence of poor sleep quality.

"Daily screen use was associated with later bedtimes and approximately 50 minutes less sleep each week. Associations were greater among those with evening chronotypes, who are at risk for poor sleep due to social jetlag (ie, misalignment between circadian rhythms and social commitments)" the study highlighted.

It added that light exposure through the phone or other digital screens disrupted the natural sleep cycle by delaying the onset of melatonin which is a hormone that regulates sleep-wake cycles.

While high-quality sleep is essential for good health, the average sleep duration and quality have declined in the last few decades, with one-third of adults not meeting the recommended guidelines of seven to nine hours of sleep per night.

"Our findings strengthen the evidence that electronic screen use and disruptions to sleep duration and quality are not limited to children and adolescents but to the broader adult population as well."

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Social media and sleep

The study also pointed out that the disruption in sleep might not limited to the effects of screen light. In fact, the type of content consumed by people could also be disrupting their sleep cycle.

They said that social media was one of the major sources of content being consumed on mobile devices but "only a handful of studies have looked at social media use at bedtime".

"Among adolescents, those who checked social media 30 minutes before bed were 1.62 times more likely to report sleep disturbance," the researchers stated.

Sleep deprivation has a serious impact on a person's overall health as it affects the brain areas responsible for executive functions, memory and regions involved in attention and emotional regulation. in the long run, it can increase the risk of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, anxiety, depression and weaken the immune system.