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10 1109@bsn 2018 8329667 PDF
10 1109@bsn 2018 8329667 PDF
Abstract— As the economy progresses and new technology to understand the use of smartphones during different times
emerges, more people are struggling with sleep-related difficul- periods before sleep (i.e., before bed-time and during the
ties. Researchers have previously identified that smartphone time to fall asleep) and the resulting variations in sleep
use may be associated with poor sleep quality. However,
smartphones have become an indispensable part of modern life. quality.
Therefore, it is important to investigate the potential impacts
of smartphone use patterns on an individual’s health. In this B. Related Work
paper, we investigate sleep quality variations between two sets
of pre-sleep phone use patterns: phone use before bed-time and Assessment of sleep quality and sleep hygiene has been
phone use during bed-time (before sleep). Our analysis, based an active area of research for a long time. Researchers have
on a multi-year mobile crowdsensed data collection effort on found an association between smartphone use and poor sleep
more than 400 college students, shows significant sleep quality quality [4], [5], [6], [8], [9], triggered by receiving text mes-
variations when a phone is used in either of these two usage
patterns compared to when it is not used. However, the results sages and phone calls [8], exposure to blue light from phone
also show that phone use during bed-time leads to a significantly screens while surfing on the Internet or social media [4],
worse sleep quality. We expect that these findings will be useful listening to music [5], presence of violence and sexual con-
for individuals, public authorities, and smartphone developers tent in the media [6], etc. Smartphones are an indispensable
to improve smartphone users’ sleep quality. part of modern life since they are used for various purposes
I. I NTRODUCTION including communication, leisure time entertainment, social
networking, information gathering, and navigation. While it
A. Motivation
will therefore be impossible to stop phone use altogether,
Insufficient sleep and poor sleep quality have been de- we need to understand the effects of phone use (during
clared as a “public health problem” by the Centers for different times of the day) on users’ sleep quality in order
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States. to identify potential recommendations or solutions. This
According to the CDC, more than a third of American adults requires a large-scale study over an extended period of time,
are not getting enough sleep on a regular basis and this rate which is not possible using current approaches that rely
continues to rise [1]. This increasing sleep loss and its effect only on one-time surveys or limited (in-lab) experimental
on sleep quality are associated with psychosocial stress, setups. Surveys often suffer from inaccuracies and biases,
anxiety and depression, unbalanced diet and obesity, lack of such as recall bias, and memory limitations [10], [11],
physical activity [1], difficulties with speech, mood changes, while in-lab experiments are limited in scale, time and other
lapses of memory and illusions [2], and suicide [3]. Also, factors. However, with the advancement of smartphones and
seven of the fifteen leading causes of death in the United wearables, we are now able to collect large-scale behavioral
States, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hyperten- data (e.g., sleep habits, phone use behaviors) from users’
sion, and accidents, have been linked to sleep difficulties [1]. daily life [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17]. This makes it
Besides affecting health and well-being, sleep also negatively feasible to accurately analyze various sleep quality factors
impacts workplace productivity and cognitive performance, such as the number and durations of awakenings or counts
which can lead to traffic accidents, industrial accidents, and and durations of restless periods during a sleep session. Such
medical errors [1]. An annual economic loss ranging from detailed sleep quality analysis allows us to better understand
$299 billion to $433 billion has been estimated for year sleep quality variations due to phone use at different times,
2020 in the U.S. due to insufficient sleep and its impact on e.g., before bed-time and during bed-time, and hence to
workplace productivity [1]. In addition to all these negative potentially regulate the use of phones to promote sleep
impacts, poor sleep quality also adversely affects the school quality.
performance and academic success of college students. Many
young adults who frequently use their phones before bed- C. Contributions
time have been found to suffer from poor sleep quality
based on data obtained from surveys [4], [5], [6]. However, The main contribution of this work is to reveal the
smartphones with their numerous benefits have become an differences in sleep quality among two types of pre-sleep
indispensable part of modern life. Therefore, it is important phone use – (1) before getting into bed (i.e., pre-bed-time)
and (2) while in bed (i.e., bed-time) – using sensor data
*This work was not supported by any organization from a multi-year mobile crowdsensed data collection effort.
1 S. Vhaduri, and C. Poellabauer are with the Department of Computer
Science and Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, Through our analysis we have found that both types of sleep
USA {svhaduri,cpoellab} at nd.edu sessions lead to poor sleep quality. However, sleep sessions
978-1-5386-1109-8/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 94
Fig. 1. A main sleep session (i.e., the longest period of sleep in a day) and a user’s phone use before the sleep session. The entire sleep session (i.e.,
[t1 , t4 ], “time in bed”) is composed of “time to fall asleep” (i.e., [t1 , t2 ], left maroon horizontal bar), “sleep-time” (i.e., [t2 , t3 ], blue horizontal bar) and
“time after wake-up” (i.e., [t3 , t4 ], right maroon horizontal bar). According to the Fitbit Charge HR device during sleep-time a user stays in three stages
– “asleep”, “restless”, and “awake” [7]. The left black horizontal bar denotes the pre-bed-time (Δt ). We analyze the user’s phone use in terms of screen
unlock-lock sessions and audio busy samples.
associated with bed-time phone use lead to a significantly with more than 400 freshmen. The goal of the study was to
worse quality compared to pre-bed-time sessions. investigate the impacts of “always-on connectivity” on the
health habits, emotional wellness, and social ties of college
II. DATA C OLLECTION AND M ETHODS
students over a multi-year period. All procedures were fully
In this paper, we intend to demonstrate the link between approved by the IRB before distribution. The students were
phone use behaviors before sleep with sleep quality using instructed to continuously wear a Fitbit Charge HR device
data from multiple devices. Before we describe the details that was provided to them. Further, they were given a data
of the analysis, we first introduce some sleep related ter- collection app for their iPhones. Both the Fitbit and the
minology and then we introduce the dataset, methods, and smartphone app collected data 24 hours a day. Occasionally,
pre-processing steps used in this work. the students were also asked to respond to various types of
A. Preliminaries and Definitions surveys including the PSQI survey [18]. All students resided
in on-campus dormitories and received a payment of $50 at
A Fitbit Charge HR device provides three sleep stages [7]:
the time of enrollment, followed by a monthly incentive up
• Asleep: A user’s body is completely at rest and not
to $35 based on their compliance. Subjects had an average
moving. age of 17 years and 11 months (SD = 11 months).
• Restless: A user’s body transitions from a very restful
The data collected by the smartphone app includes iden-
position with little movement to movement, such as tifiers of the device’s network connections (Wi-Fi, cellu-
turning over in bed, which does not necessarily mean lar), battery charge level, screen state, geographic location,
fully awake or cognizant of movements. and user communications (e.g., phone calls). Sensor data
• Awake: A user has cognizant movements.
are transmitted to a remote server via a nightly upload
B. NetHealth Study Dataset mechanism. The data collected by the Fitbit device includes
heart rate, calorie burn, physical activity level, step count,
The NetHealth mobile crowd sensing (MCS) study [12],
sleep status, and self-recorded activity labels. These sensor-
[13], [14] began at the University of Notre Dame in 2015
based sleep data can be used to analyze sleep behavior
over an extended period of time due to their reasonable
TABLE I accuracy [19]. Table I shows a summary of the dataset that
DATA S UMMARY we use in this work.
96
(i.e., Δt in Figure 1) (G#2). From the Two-Sample t-Test R EFERENCES
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TABLE V
TABLE IV T HE Two-Sample t-Test SUMMARY OF PHONE USE DURING PRE - BED - TIME
T HE Two-Sample t-Test SUMMARY OF PHONE USE VS . NOT USE DURING AND BED - TIME . F OR THE THREE TYPES OF PHONE USE THE DEGREES OF
BED - TIME . F OR THE THREE TYPES OF PHONE USE THE DEGREES OF FREEDOM ( DF ) ARE 266, 323, AND 257, RESPECTIVELY. PU AND SQ
FREEDOM ( DF ) ARE 3674, 2254, AND 3698, RESPECTIVELY. STANDS FOR PHONE USE TYPE AND SLEEP QUALITY MEASURE .
PU SQ μ1 μ2 t− signifi- PU SQ μ1 μ2 t− signifi-
(σ1 ) (σ2 ) stat. cance (σ1 ) (σ2 ) stat. cance
S1 16.1(14.6) 14.4(8.9) 3.94 *** S1 19.2(16.4) 14.9(10.5) 2.31 **
P1 S2 26.7(49.0) 25.4(30.1) 0.90 . P1 S2 33.7(40.7) 30.3(44.1) 0.50 .
S3 12.6(9.7) 12.8(7.5) -0.71 . S3 14.3(11.2) 12.6(7.8) 1.28 .
S4 38.5(43.8) 29.6(31.8) 6.15 *** S4 49.7(49.5) 35.2(42.5) 2.07 **
S1 19.5(20.0) 14.1(8.9) 6.99 *** S1 20.7(16.2) 14.3(8.7) 4.57 ***
P2 S2 33.4(63.9) 22.9(27.4) 4.37 *** P2 S2 29.1(42.1) 22.2(29.7) 1.68 *
S3 14.1(12.0) 12.3(7.3) 3.03 ** S3 14.6(9.7) 12.0(7.1) 2.72 **
S4 55.3(62.0) 28.5(26.5) 11.61 *** S4 57.0(47.5) 29.4(28.9) 6.43 ***
S1 16.3(15.0) 14.4(8.7) 4.55 *** S1 23.4(19.9) 14.4(9.5) 4.63 ***
P3 S2 27.4(50.0) 25.2(29.6) 1.51 . P3 S2 43.1(52.9) 28.8(42.1) 2.01 **
S3 12.7(9.8) 12.8(7.5) -0.40 . S3 16.6(12.2) 12.3(7.5) 3.08 **
S4 38.9(44.8) 29.5(31.6) 6.60 *** S4 61.9(61.1) 34.6(42.3) 3.67 ***
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