Correlation between mobile phone use before sleep, sleep quality and daytime sleepiness

Abstract

OBJECTIVE Verify changes on sleep quality and duration after abstention from the use of mobile phones close to sleep time, such as decrease of daytime sleepiness. METHODOLOGY: The same population of medical students was compared on two occasions: during normal use of the device and after not using it an hour before bedtime for 15 days. The sample consisted of 76 medical students from 1st to 4th year, aged 17 to 40 years, who volunteered to participate in the study and signed a consent form. As data collection instruments, the following questionnaires were used: Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) and a tool to assess the use of mobile phones developed for this research. The statistical analysis was performed using the t-student’s test paired nonparametric, adopting p <0.05 as significance level. RESULTS: Significant changes were observed on PSQI results (p<0.01) with a sleep quality increase in 65.7% of the participants (mean score before 8.2 ± 2.9/mean score after 6.4 ± 2.7). There were also significant changes on the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (p<0.01), with a decrease of daytime sleepiness in 85.5% of the participants (mean before 8.9 ± 3.3/mean score after 5.1 ± 2.7 points). DISCUSSION: There was significant improvement in sleep quality and daytime sleepiness. An important factor to be considered is that the restriction applied to the volunteers was only related to mobile phone use, other electronic devices were not included. The anxiety caused by the intervention was also not considered. Both factors might be related to the cases in which there was a worsening or maintenance of the scores. With the restriction of mobile phone on the hour preceding sleep, for 15 days, positive changes on sleep could already be observed.