Devices and time to fall asleep: a small self-experiment
I did a small self-experiment on the question “Does the use of devices (phone, laptop) in the evening affect the time taken to fall asleep?”.
Setup
On each day during the experiment I went to sleep at 23:00.
At 21:30 I randomized what I’ll do at 21:30-22:45. Each of the following three options was equally likely:
Read a physical book
Read a book on my phone
Read a book on my laptop
At 22:45-23:00 I brushed my teeth etc. and did not use devices at this time.
Time taken to fall asleep was measured by a smart watch. (I have not selected it for being good to measure sleep, though.) I had blue light filters on my phone and laptop.
Results
I ran the experiment for n = 17 days (the days were not consecutive, but all took place in a consecutive ~month).
I ended up having 6 days for “phys. book”, 6 days for “book on phone” and 5 days for “book on laptop”.
On one experiment day (when I read a physical book), my watch reported me as falling asleep at 21:31. I discarded this as a measuring error.
For the resulting 16 days, average times to fall asleep were 5.4 minutes, 21 minutes and 22 minutes, for phys. book, phone and laptop, respectively.
[Raw data:
Phys. book: 0, 0, 2, 5, 22
Phone: 2, 14, 21, 24, 32, 33
Laptop: 0, 6, 10, 27, 66.]
Conclusion
The sample size was small (I unfortunately lost the motivation to continue). Nevertheless it gave me quite strong evidence that being on devices indeed does affect sleep.
Devices and time to fall asleep: a small self-experiment
I did a small self-experiment on the question “Does the use of devices (phone, laptop) in the evening affect the time taken to fall asleep?”.
Setup
On each day during the experiment I went to sleep at 23:00.
At 21:30 I randomized what I’ll do at 21:30-22:45. Each of the following three options was equally likely:
Read a physical book
Read a book on my phone
Read a book on my laptop
At 22:45-23:00 I brushed my teeth etc. and did not use devices at this time.
Time taken to fall asleep was measured by a smart watch. (I have not selected it for being good to measure sleep, though.) I had blue light filters on my phone and laptop.
Results
I ran the experiment for n = 17 days (the days were not consecutive, but all took place in a consecutive ~month).
I ended up having 6 days for “phys. book”, 6 days for “book on phone” and 5 days for “book on laptop”.
On one experiment day (when I read a physical book), my watch reported me as falling asleep at 21:31. I discarded this as a measuring error.
For the resulting 16 days, average times to fall asleep were 5.4 minutes, 21 minutes and 22 minutes, for phys. book, phone and laptop, respectively.
[Raw data:
Phys. book: 0, 0, 2, 5, 22
Phone: 2, 14, 21, 24, 32, 33
Laptop: 0, 6, 10, 27, 66.]
Conclusion
The sample size was small (I unfortunately lost the motivation to continue). Nevertheless it gave me quite strong evidence that being on devices indeed does affect sleep.