Smartphones are among one of the most pervasive technologies that young people throughout the world have adopted for entertainment experience. And yet, at the same time, there is increasing evidence that smartphones may have a detrimental influence on sleep. Problematically, this evidence has ignored individual differences in development by focusing mainly on adults, lacks an interdisciplinary approach, and suffers from significant methodological limitations (e.g. heavy reliance on self-report data). Launched in Spring 2019, the digiSLEEP team will address these gaps by capitalizing on the latest methodological and technological innovations in the field of media exposure and sleep tracking. The digiSLEEP team aims to understand how smartphones are influencing sleep of today’s adolescents and emerging adults by asking about the the effect of time spent on smartphone, the effect of exposure to smartphone screen light, and the effect of smartphone media content. This research line is co-directed by Susanne Baumgartner and Sindy Sumter.
