SojiwaCan't sleep after scrolling your phone in bed at night?
Phone in bed and your brain won't switch off? What studies found about in-bed scrolling, pre-sleep arousal, and a 30-minute change worth testing.
Written by the Sojiwa editorial team with AI assistance. Not medical advice.
Short answer: Scrolling in bed is linked to taking longer to fall asleep and lying awake for longer, and it keeps both your mind and body more switched on. In a small trial, students who stopped using their phones 30 minutes before bed fell asleep faster, slept longer and felt less wound up at bedtime.
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Why can't you sleep after scrolling, even once the phone is face down? Because the scrolling keeps your mind and body more switched on, and that state does not end when the screen goes dark. In a small trial, people who stopped using their phones 30 minutes before bed fell asleep faster and reported feeling less wound up, both in their thoughts and in their bodies.
The brain keeps "refreshing" after the phone is down
The trial, published in 2020, followed 38 university students in Shanghai who already slept poorly and usually used their phones in bed for more than half an hour. Half of them stopped using their phones 30 minutes before their usual bedtime, for four weeks. The other half carried on as normal.
The group that stopped fell asleep faster, slept longer and rated their sleep better. They also reported less pre-sleep arousal, which researchers measure in two parts: cognitive, meaning racing or busy thoughts, and somatic, meaning bodily signs like a fast heartbeat or tense muscles. Both went down.
That two-part finding explains the feeling of putting the phone away while your head keeps going. Your thoughts and your body are still running at the pace the scrolling set, and lying still in the dark does not reset them on its own.
Minutes in bed add up in a way you can measure
A Finnish study tracked 75 adults, mostly linked to one university, for four months, using a sleep ring and logs of their phone use. In-bed phone use was linked to taking longer to fall asleep and spending more time awake during the night.
The authors' estimates are concrete. For every five minutes of phone use in bed, falling asleep took about four minutes longer. For every ten minutes, time awake in the night rose by about nine minutes. So the cost is not only the time on the screen; it can come close to doubling it.
This study was observational, and the authors say they cannot tell whether the phone caused worse sleep, or whether people who were already sleeping badly reached for their phones more. Both may be true at once.
What you do on the phone may matter as much as how long
The same Finnish study looked at types of apps. Games and entertainment apps used in bed were linked to lower sleep quality. Social media use was not linked to worse sleep in their data. Messaging and productivity apps used outside bed were linked to better sleep.
If you cannot give up the phone in the evening, this suggests a place to start: move it out of bed, and move the games and endless videos earlier in the evening. Replying to a friend on the sofa is a different thing from a game under the blanket.
Both studies were small, and their participants were university students in China and adults around one Finnish university, so the effects may be different for you. They point the same way, though, and the trial shows the change is testable in a few weeks.
If you still cannot fall asleep most nights after a few weeks without the phone in bed, or poor sleep is affecting your days, that is a reason to see a doctor.
Try this today
Tonight, set an alarm for 30 minutes before your usual bedtime. When it goes, plug your phone in somewhere you cannot reach from bed and do something with paper, light or quiet instead.
Thirty minutes is the gap the trial tested, and putting the phone out of reach turns a decision you would have to keep making into one you make once.
Small steps, and a pet that grows with you
Check in, write in your journal or practise breathing to earn coins for your pet.
Before the 30 minutes start, you could write a short journal entry in Sojiwa; if you are stuck, the reflection prompt at the bottom of the writing box gives you a question, and "Another prompt" swaps it for a different one.
