A study of more than 91,000 people has found that scrolling through your Instagram and Twitter feeds from the comfort of your pillow in the wee hours could increase the likelihood of developing a number of psychological problems such as depression, bipolar disorder and neuroticism.
Late night phone-usage is just one of the disruptive behaviours pointed out by the researchers, who attributed the links to the aforementioned symptoms to body clock disturbance.
This study, published in The Lancet Psychiatry by professors at The University of Glasgow, is the first to monitor body clock disruption on such a large scale.
Participants aged 37 to 73 had their activity levels monitored by wrist-work accelerometers, which they wore for a seven day period, enabling researchers to measure the extent at which their circadian rhythmicity was disturbed during this time.
However, there were caveats to the findings, given that participants were only monitored for a week and were exclusively middle-aged and above.
These people were 11 per cent more likely to have bipolar disorder and six per cent more likely to be battling depression, they found.
Plus, they also reported lower happiness levels and greater rates of loneliness.
Such people suffer from “very poor sleep hygiene”, said lead author Daniel Smith of the University of Glasgow and would engage in late night activities such as playing on their mobile phones or making cups of tea.
While Smith advocated imposing a 10pm limit to phone usage to help combat this, he added that daytime activities have a part to play too, explaining that a healthy sleep pattern is often the result of being active during the day and inactive at night.
“I think this is important as a population health issue because so many of us are living with disrupted circadian rhythms,” he said.
“It’s unlikely that the way society is currently set up is good for your health. So many people are living in city environments flooded with light 24/7.”
(The Lancet Psychiatry)
Emeh Achanga,the CEO of the Miss Petite Nigeria Brand is a lawyer turned blogger. She is very passionate about writing, with several publications and awards to her credit .She is currently working on publishing a collection of short stories which are basically a memoir about her exciting true experiences.
