How is your phone affecting your sleep?

Key takeaways

• The biggest cost is time. Scrolling in bed pushes back the moment you put the phone down and try to sleep, and studies of real phone use find it adds up to later bedtimes and shorter nights.

• Phones also wake people up. Alerts during the night and checking the phone after waking break up sleep, and in one study of young adolescents, leaving the ringer on predicted worse sleep a year later.

• What you do on it counts. Messaging, gaming, and social media keep the brain busier than reading or listening, though the time they take matters more than how stimulating they are.

• Blue light is a smaller part of the story. Real phone screens change sleep far less than lab studies of bright blue light suggest.

• The simplest fix is distance. Charging the phone outside the bedroom and stopping 30 to 60 minutes before bed is what sleep doctors recommend.

How many people use their phones in bed

Most of us take the phone to bed. In a 2023 survey of 2,005 US adults for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 87% said they keep a phone in the bedroom, and 45% said they use it when they can’t sleep. In an earlier survey for the academy, 93% of Gen Z adults said they had stayed up past their bedtime because of social media, along with 80% of adults overall.

Teenagers are the heaviest users. In a 2011 US poll of 1,508 people, 72% of those aged 13 to 18 used a phone in the hour before bed.

It eats into your sleep time

The most direct cost is time. Minutes spent scrolling come straight out of the night.

Researchers call this bedtime procrastination, going to bed later than you meant to even though nothing is stopping you. The term was coined in a 2014 study from Utrecht University, and a 2022 review of 43 studies found it went with shorter and poorer sleep. A version of it has a nickname online, “revenge bedtime procrastination,” for staying up late to claw back free time after a long day.

Phones make this easy, because there’s always one more video or message. In a 2022 survey of 711 Australian teenagers, each 30 minutes of phone use in the hour before bed went with a bedtime about 9 minutes later. That’s small on any one night and adds up over a week.

It wakes you up at night

The second problem is interruption. A phone on the nightstand can wake you with a buzz or a glow, and it’s right there if you wake up on your own.

In a study of 815 young adults in Denmark whose phones logged when they were used, more than 12% had phone activity in the middle of their sleep period at least once over four weeks. Those whose sleep was often interrupted by their phones reported sleeping about 48 minutes less.

Teenagers again show the clearest pattern. In the US ABCD study of more than 10,000 young adolescents, those who left their phone ringer on overnight reported more sleep problems, and a follow-up found it predicted worse sleep a year later. A 2007 Belgian study of teenagers found that the more often they used their phones after lights-out, the more likely they were to be very tired a year later.

Having the phone in the room seems to make a difference even when it isn’t used. A 2016 review of 20 studies covering 125,198 children found that those who used a device at bedtime were about twice as likely to sleep too little. Those who simply had access to one in the bedroom, without using it, were also more likely to.

What you do on it makes a small difference

Some kinds of phone use seem worse than others. In the 2011 poll, the more interactive devices people used in the hour before bed, such as phones, computers, and game consoles, the more likely they were to have trouble falling asleep. Passive ones like TVs and music players showed no such link.

Engaging content keeps the brain switched on. A 2017 study of binge-watching found it was linked to worse sleep through mental arousal, the feeling of being too wired to sleep. But in a lab study where people used social media for 30 minutes before a fixed bedtime, their sleep barely changed. Taken together, the research points to lost time as the bigger problem.

What about blue light?

Blue light gets most of the attention, but its effect on sleep is smaller than its reputation. Light at night does push back the body clock, though the amount a phone screen gives off changes sleep only a little in studies of real devices. We cover this in detail in our post on whether blue light from your phone keeps you awake.

Do sleep apps and sounds count?

Using your phone to play rain sounds or a podcast is different from scrolling, as long as the screen stays off. The evidence for sleep audio apps is mixed, though. A large 2026 trial of 495 people found that a sleep audio app made no meaningful difference compared with a digital control, after a smaller pilot study had looked promising. Catchy music can backfire, too. A 2021 study found that music before bed could give people earworms that disturbed their sleep. Our post on white noise covers what steady background sound can and can’t do.

Sleep trackers on your phone or wrist have their own catch. Sleep researchers have described patients so fixated on their tracker data, in a quest for perfect sleep, that it fed their sleep complaints. They named the pattern orthosomnia.

Does cutting back actually help?

The trials are small but point in the same direction. In a 2020 pilot trial of 38 college students who slept poorly, those asked to stop using their phones 30 minutes before bed for four weeks cut the time it took them to fall asleep from about 31 minutes to 18, and ended up sleeping about 18 minutes more a night than the control group.

Not every trial found a benefit. In a 2022 trial in which 89 Danish families cut their leisure screen time sharply for two weeks, children’s sleep measured with brain recordings didn’t change significantly. And turning a phone’s screen to grayscale cut daily screen time by 28 minutes in one study, but people didn’t rate their sleep any differently.

How to keep your phone from costing you sleep

• Charge it outside the bedroom. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine suggests keeping the phone in another room overnight, which removes both the temptation and the alerts.

• Set a cutoff. The academy recommends stopping screens 30 to 60 minutes before bed. Use that time for something you won’t get lost in, like a book or a shower.

• Silence it automatically. If the phone has to stay in the room, schedule Do Not Disturb or a sleep mode so calls and alerts stay quiet overnight.

• Use a separate alarm clock. A cheap alarm clock means there’s no reason to have the phone within reach, and it’s harder to start scrolling after you switch it off. Hitting snooze tends to make the groggy feeling last longer, according to a small 2022 study.

• Don’t check the time at night. If you wake up, picking up the phone to check the time often turns into checking everything else.

• Make audio a screen-off habit. If you fall asleep to sound, start it before you lie down and turn the screen face down.

• Keep teenagers’ phones out of their rooms overnight. The research on young people is the most consistent, and a household rule about charging phones in the kitchen is easier to keep than a time limit.

Frequently asked questions

Is it bad to use your phone before bed?

It’s not harmful in itself, but it tends to delay sleep and keep you up later than you planned. Stopping 30 to 60 minutes before bed and keeping the phone out of reach is the advice from sleep doctors.

Should you sleep with your phone in your bedroom?

Ideally not. A phone in the bedroom makes it easier to stay up late and to be woken by alerts. If you need it nearby, use a sleep mode that silences notifications overnight.

Does night mode stop your phone from affecting sleep?

Not by much. Night mode reduces blue light, but the bigger effects come from the time you spend on the phone and the alerts that wake you up.

Is it OK to fall asleep listening to something on your phone?

Usually, yes, as long as the screen stays off and you’re not tempted to start scrolling. Steady sound like white noise is less likely to keep your brain busy than a gripping podcast or catchy music.

How long before bed should you stop using your phone?

Sleep doctors suggest 30 to 60 minutes. In one small trial, stopping 30 minutes before bed helped people fall asleep faster and sleep a little longer.

Why can’t I stop scrolling at night?

It’s common. Researchers call it bedtime procrastination, and it’s often worse after a busy day with little free time. Moving the phone out of reach works better than relying on willpower.