sakella1 / field-experiment-and-causal-inference--effect-of-screentime-on-sleep

W241-phones-and-sleep

Effect of Screen Time on Quality of Sleep

Abstract

Technology has shifted people’s lives, including their routines prior to bed. Today, most people use some sort of electronic device before going to sleep. Though researchers are claiming this habit changes sleep quality, it is not clear if the length of phone usage prior to bed affects sleep quality. Does 10 to 15 minutes of not using electronic devices prior to sleep change sleep quality?

We studied this by recruiting subjects to participate in a two-week experiment, where one week they were assigned to a placebo group and another week they were assigned to a treatment group. The placebo intervention required participants to read articles from their phones prior to sleep and the treatment intervention required participants to read paper articles prior to sleep. Overall, the results did not show significant differences between the placebo and treatment group.