Yawning while scrolling? Examining gender differences in the association between smartphone use and sleep quality

The negative consequences of deteriorated sleep have been widely acknowledged. Therefore, research on the determinants of poor sleep is crucial. A factor potentially contributing to poor sleep is the use of a smartphone. This study aims to measure the association between overall daily smartphone use and both sleep quality and sleep duration. To this end, we exploit data on 1,889 first-year university students. Compared with previous research we control for a large set of observed confounding factors. Higher overall smartphone use is associated with lower odds of experiencing a good sleep. In addition, we explore heterogeneous differences by socioeconomic factors not yet investigated. We find that the negative association between smartphone use and sleep quality is mainly driven by female participants.