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Smartphones use can affect your sleep (2014-01-24)

Researchers at the University of Washington say using your phone late at night can seriously damage your sleep - and your performance at work the next day.
A research led by Christopher Barnes, an assistant professor of management at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business, concluded that smartphones are almost perfectly designed to disrupt sleep.

 


 

They keep us mentally engaged with work late into the evening, making it harder to detach, relax, and get the deep sleep needed to recharge our mental batteries.
Smartphones are bad for sleep, and sleep is very important to effectiveness as an employee, says Christopher Barnes.
They also encourage poor sleep hygiene, a set of behaviors that make it harder to both fall asleep and stay asleep. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of smartphones when it comes to sleep is that they expose us to light, including blue light, which in even small amounts inhibits the sleep-promoting chemical melatonin.
The research that will be published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes later this year follows two previous works.

In the first, the doctoral student Sara Thomée and her research colleagues at the University of Gothenburg’s Sahlgrenska Academy have conducted four different studies looking at how the use of computers and mobile phones affects the mental health of young adults.
These studies, which included questionnaires for 4,100 people aged 20-24 and interviews with 32 young heavy ICT users, reveal that intensive use of mobile phones and computers can be linked to stress, sleep disorders and depressive symptoms.
“Public health advice should therefore include information on the healthy use of this technology,” says researcher Sara Thomée from the Sahlgrenska Academy...".

In the second, researchers from the Sommeil, attention et neuropsychiatrie laboratory (CNRS / Université Bordeaux Segalen) and their Swedish colleagues have recently demonstrated that constant exposure to blue light is as effective as coffee at improving night drivers' alertness. Based on tests conducted in real driving conditions, the results have been published in the journal PLoS One. They could pave the way for the development of an electronic anti-sleep system to be built into vehicles".

Switching off your mobile at 9pm could make you far more productive in work the next day, researchers have found: using your phone late at night can seriously damage your sleep - and your performance.
They advise employees to switch off - or risk being 'less engaged' at work the next day.
Christopher Barnes' research will be published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes later this year.

'Perhaps the most difficult aspect of smartphones to avoid is that they expose us to light, including blue light.
'Even small amounts of blue light inhibit the sleep-promoting chemical melatonin, meaning that the displays of smartphones are capable of producing this effect.'
The more important the job, the more important it is to work with a fresh brain.

For more information
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Marco Dal Negro

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