2018 IEEE 15th International Conference on Wearable and Implantable Body Sensor Networks (BSN)
4-7 March 2018
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Impact of Different Pre-Sleep Phone Use Patterns on Sleep Quality
Sudip Vhaduri1 and Christian Poellabauer1
Abstract— As the economy progresses and new technology
emerges, more people are struggling with sleep-related difficul-
ties. Researchers have previously identified that smartphone
use may be associated with poor sleep quality. However,
smartphones have become an indispensable part of modern life.
Therefore, it is important to investigate the potential impacts
of smartphone use patterns on an individual’s health. In this
paper, we investigate sleep quality variations between two sets
of pre-sleep phone use patterns: phone use before bed-time and
phone use during bed-time (before sleep). Our analysis, based
on a multi-year mobile crowdsensed data collection effort on
more than 400 college students, shows significant sleep quality
variations when a phone is used in either of these two usage
patterns compared to when it is not used. However, the results
also show that phone use during bed-time leads to a significantly
worse sleep quality. We expect that these findings will be useful
for individuals, public authorities, and smartphone developers
to improve smartphone users’ sleep quality.
I. I NTRODUCTION
A. Motivation
Insufficient sleep and poor sleep quality have been de-
clared as a “public health problem” by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States.
According to the CDC, more than a third of American adults
are not getting enough sleep on a regular basis and this rate
continues to rise [1]. This increasing sleep loss and its effect
on sleep quality are associated with psychosocial stress,
anxiety and depression, unbalanced diet and obesity, lack of
physical activity [1], difficulties with speech, mood changes,
lapses of memory and illusions [2], and suicide [3]. Also,
seven of the fifteen leading causes of death in the United
States, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hyperten-
sion, and accidents, have been linked to sleep difficulties [1].
Besides affecting health and well-being, sleep also negatively
impacts workplace productivity and cognitive performance,
which can lead to traffic accidents, industrial accidents, and
medical errors [1]. An annual economic loss ranging from
$299 billion to $433 billion has been estimated for year
2020 in the U.S. due to insufficient sleep and its impact on
workplace productivity [1]. In addition to all these negative
impacts, poor sleep quality also adversely affects the school
performance and academic success of college students. Many
young adults who frequently use their phones before bed-
time have been found to suffer from poor sleep quality
based on data obtained from surveys [4], [5], [6]. However,
smartphones with their numerous benefits have become an
indispensable part of modern life. Therefore, it is important
*This work was not supported by any organization
1 S. Vhaduri, and C. Poellabauer are with the Department of Computer
Science and Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556,
USA {svhaduri,cpoellab} at nd.edu
978-1-5386-1109-8/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
to understand the use of smartphones during different times
periods before sleep (i.e., before bed-time and during the
time to fall asleep) and the resulting variations in sleep
quality.
B. Related Work
Assessment of sleep quality and sleep hygiene has been
an active area of research for a long time. Researchers have
found an association between smartphone use and poor sleep
quality [4], [5], [6], [8], [9], triggered by receiving text mes-
sages and phone calls [8], exposure to blue light from phone
screens while surfing on the Internet or social media [4],
listening to music [5], presence of violence and sexual con-
tent in the media [6], etc. Smartphones are an indispensable
part of modern life since they are used for various purposes
including communication, leisure time entertainment, social
networking, information gathering, and navigation. While it
will therefore be impossible to stop phone use altogether,
we need to understand the effects of phone use (during
different times of the day) on users’ sleep quality in order
to identify potential recommendations or solutions. This
requires a large-scale study over an extended period of time,
which is not possible using current approaches that rely
only on one-time surveys or limited (in-lab) experimental
setups. Surveys often suffer from inaccuracies and biases,
such as recall bias, and memory limitations [10], [11],
while in-lab experiments are limited in scale, time and other
factors. However, with the advancement of smartphones and
wearables, we are now able to collect large-scale behavioral
data (e.g., sleep habits, phone use behaviors) from users’
daily life [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17]. This makes it
feasible to accurately analyze various sleep quality factors
such as the number and durations of awakenings or counts
and durations of restless periods during a sleep session. Such
detailed sleep quality analysis allows us to better understand
sleep quality variations due to phone use at different times,
e.g., before bed-time and during bed-time, and hence to
potentially regulate the use of phones to promote sleep
quality.
C. Contributions
The main contribution of this work is to reveal the
differences in sleep quality among two types of pre-sleep
phone use – (1) before getting into bed (i.e., pre-bed-time)
and (2) while in bed (i.e., bed-time) – using sensor data
from a multi-year mobile crowdsensed data collection effort.
Through our analysis we have found that both types of sleep
sessions lead to poor sleep quality. However, sleep sessions
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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
worse quality compared to pre-bed-time sessions.
II. DATA C OLLECTION AND M ETHODS
In this paper, we intend to demonstrate the link between
phone use behaviors before sleep with sleep quality using
data from multiple devices. Before we describe the details
of the analysis, we first introduce some sleep related ter-
minology and then we introduce the dataset, methods, and
pre-processing steps used in this work.
A. Preliminaries and Definitions
A Fitbit Charge HR device provides three sleep stages [7]:
• Asleep: A user’s body is completely at rest and not
moving.
• Restless: A user’s body transitions from a very restful
position with little movement to movement, such as
turning over in bed, which does not necessarily mean
fully awake or cognizant of movements.
• Awake: A user has cognizant movements.
B. NetHealth Study Dataset
The NetHealth mobile crowd sensing (MCS) study [12],
[13], [14] began at the University of Notre Dame in 2015
TABLE I
DATA S UMMARY
with more than 400 freshmen. The goal of the study was to
investigate the impacts of “always-on connectivity” on the
health habits, emotional wellness, and social ties of college
students over a multi-year period. All procedures were fully
approved by the IRB before distribution. The students were
instructed to continuously wear a Fitbit Charge HR device
that was provided to them. Further, they were given a data
collection app for their iPhones. Both the Fitbit and the
smartphone app collected data 24 hours a day. Occasionally,
the students were also asked to respond to various types of
surveys including the PSQI survey [18]. All students resided
in on-campus dormitories and received a payment of $50 at
the time of enrollment, followed by a monthly incentive up
to $35 based on their compliance. Subjects had an average
age of 17 years and 11 months (SD = 11 months).
The data collected by the smartphone app includes iden-
tifiers of the device’s network connections (Wi-Fi, cellu-
lar), battery charge level, screen state, geographic location,
and user communications (e.g., phone calls). Sensor data
are transmitted to a remote server via a nightly upload
mechanism. The data collected by the Fitbit device includes
heart rate, calorie burn, physical activity level, step count,
sleep status, and self-recorded activity labels. These sensor-
based sleep data can be used to analyze sleep behavior
over an extended period of time due to their reasonable
accuracy [19]. Table I shows a summary of the dataset that
we use in this work.

Device Sensor Data Type Sampling C. Data Pre-Processing

Period
Phone Screen State unlock, lock Callback Unlike the audio state, iOS provides the screen state as
Audio State busy, not busy 120 s two callback labels, i.e., “unlock” and “lock.” Similarly, the
Fitbit Sleep Status asleep, restless, awake 60 s Fitbit Charge HR device provides sleep session as a set
Fitbit Sleep Session start time, end date, time in Callback
bed, session duration, time to of callback labels (Table I). Therefore, before we use this
fall asleep, restless count & information, we need to process them to form “sessions”.
duration, time after wake-up, 1) Fitbit Sleep Sessions: A Fitbit expresses each sleep
asleep duration, main sleep
flag, awake count & duration session with a start time, a duration (in millisecond), and an
end date (i.e., year, month, and day). Since sleep sessions
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often begin during one day and end on the next, the end
date and duration is used to determine if the sleep session
began the previous day and the start time combined with
the duration provides us with the session end time. That is,
a session is then expressed as 2-tuple (start-date-time, end-
date-time). Figure 1 presents a main sleep session along with
its different parts. In the figure, t1 and t4 are the two elements
of the 2-tuple, t2 = t1 + time to fall asleep, and t3 = t4 -
time after wake-up. A full session time (i.e., “time in bed”)
is defined by: time in bed = time to fall asleep + asleep
duration + awake duration + time after wake-up [7]. This
work is based on the main sleep sessions.
2) Phone Screen Unlock-lock Sessions: We first filter out
redundant and faulty screen state labels and then combine
successive “unlock” and “lock” times to define a session.
That is, a session is then expressed as 2-tuple (unlock-time,
lock-time).
D. Methods
To assess students’ phone use behavior and sleep quality,
we first investigate whether there is any significant difference
in the quality of sleep between the two sets of sleep sessions,
i.e., sessions with phone use and sessions without phone use
during pre-bed-time (i.e., Δt in Figure 1) (Section III-A).
Then, we investigate whether sleep quality varies between
sessions with phone use and sessions without phone use dur-
ing “time to fall asleep” (i.e., [t1 , t2 ] in Figure 1) (Section III-
B). Finally, we test whether sleep quality varies between
sessions with phone use during pre-bed-time and bed-time
in Section III-C. We use multiple measures to assess both
sleep quality and phone use behavior. We analyze our data
using the Two-Sample t-Test.
use information. To analyze pre-bed-time phone use, we
consider Δt = 30 minutes [4].
To compare the sleep quality variation between two sets of
sleep sessions with different phone use timing, we perform
the Two-Sample t-Test with H0 : μS1 i = μS2 i , where μS1 i
and μS2 i are the average values of sleep quality measure Si
obtained from two groups of sleep sessions. For significance
testing, we compare our p − values with three levels of α,
i.e., p < .001 (marked as “***”), p < .05 (marked as “**”),
p < .1 (marked as “*”), and p > .1 (marked as “.”).
A. Phone Use vs. Not Use during Pre-bed-time
Table III presents the summary of the Two-Sample t-Test
performed on various sleep quality measures across two
groups of sleep sessions – (1) phone use during pre-bed-
time (G#1) and (2) no phone use during pre-bed-time (G#2).
We observe that the first three sleep quality measures, i.e.,
awake count, awake duration, and restless count are always
significantly worse for the sleep sessions when the phones
are used during pre-bed-time. Therefore, phone use during
pre-bed-time may have an adverse impact on the quality of
a sleep session.
B. Phone Use vs. Not Use during Bed-time
Table IV shows the summary of the Two-sample t-Test
performed on various sleep quality measures across two
groups of sleep sessions – (1) phone use during bed-time
(actually “time to fall asleep”) (G#1) and (2) no phone use
during bed-time (G#2). From the table we observe that all
four sleep quality measures are significantly worse for G#1
compared to G#2. Therefore, phone use during bed-time may
have an adverse impact on the quality of a sleep session.

III. A NALYSIS C. Phone Use during Pre-bed-time vs. Bed-time

We analyze subjects’ phone use behavior based on phone In this section we compare the sleep quality difference
screen unlock-lock sessions (P1 ), audio port busy samples between two sets of sleep sessions, i.e., when users use
(P2 ), and a combination of both phone screen unlock-lock their phones (1) during bed-time, but not during pre-bed-time
sessions and audio port busy samples (P3 ). To measure the (G#1) and (2) during pre-bed-time, but not during bed-time
quality of a sleep session, we use awake count (i.e., number
of awakenings) (S1 ), awake duration (S2 ), restless count TABLE III
(S3 ), and restless duration (S4 ). These are negative measures T HE Two-Sample t-Test SUMMARY FOR PHONE USE VS . NOT USE DURING
of sleep quality, i.e., higher values are worse [18]. PRE - BED - TIME . F OR THE THREE TYPES OF PHONE USE THE DEGREES OF
Table II shows the distribution of sleep sessions obtained FREEDOM ( DF ) ARE 107345, 106902, AND 107623, RESPECTIVELY. PU
from subjects who use their phones during pre-bed-time and AND SQ STANDS FOR PHONE USE TYPE AND SLEEP QUALITY MEASURE .
bed-time, which is actually “time to fall asleep” in this case.
Each of these subjects has at least 10 main sleep sessions. PU SQ μ1 μ2 t− signifi-
The subject counts are varying based on the type of phone (σ1 ) (σ2 ) stat. cance
S1 15.2(8.3) 14.6(8.2) 11.50 ***
P1 S2 29.3(27.1) 28.9(29.9) 2.33 **
TABLE II S3 14.0(7.8) 13.4(7.7) 13.02 ***
D ISTRIBUTION OF PRE - BED - TIME AND BED - TIME PHONE USE S4 28.2(27.7) 28.4(31.0) -0.80 .
S1 15.4(8.3) 14.7(8.3) 12.54 ***
P2 S2 30.0(28.3) 28.8(28.7) 5.74 ***
Phone Pre-bed-time (Δt = 30 min.) Bed-time S3 14.3(7.8) 13.5(7.7) 14.74 ***
Use Subject Phone use? Subject Phone use? S4 29.1(29.3) 28.1(29.6) 4.64 ***
Measure Count Yes No Count Yes No S1 15.2(8.3) 14.6(8.2) 11.69 ***
Screen 429 50768 56579 114 711 2965 P3 S2 29.3(27.1) 28.9(29.9) 2.48 **
Audio 422 25822 81082 64 201 2055 S3 14.0(7.8) 13.4(7.7) 13.27 ***
Both 431 52061 55564 118 733 2967 S4 28.2(27.7) 28.4(31.0) -0.76 .

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(i.e., Δt in Figure 1) (G#2). From the Two-Sample t-Test
results presented in Table V, we observe that the first and
last sleep quality measures are always significantly worse
for G#1 compared to G#2. Therefore, phone use during bed-
time may have a worse impact on sleep quality compared to
phone use during pre-bed-time.
IV. D ISCUSSION AND F UTURE W ORK
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work
that investigates the sleep quality variation between two
different sets of sleep sessions (subjects using their phones
during pre-bed-time and bed-time) using sensor data from
a mobile crowdsensed data collection on an on-campus
student population over an extended period of time. In our
analysis, we identify poor sleep quality for sleep sessions
where the subjects use their phones either during pre-bed-
time or during bed-time. However, sleep quality is signifi-
cantly worse for sleep sessions where the subjects use their
phones during bed-time compared to sleep sessions where
the subjects use their phones during pre-bed-time. These
sensor-based findings from Fitbit Charge HR devices have
a better accuracy compared to existing sleep research using
surveys. However, we believe that more focused studies for
an extended period of time with different populations are
needed before generalizing the findings. Our findings can
inform recommendations for individuals to improve their
physical and mental health. Similarly, health professionals
could be guided to help their clients. Also, smartphone and
other smart technology developers could make smart devices
even smarter by regulating the availability of various services
that might have a worse impact on sleep quality, with a goal
to maintain users’ healthy sleep quality. In future work, it
will be important to further investigate the impacts of users’
physical activity, use of other types devices, and engagement
in various spatio-temporal contexts on their sleep quality.
Also, it is important to investigate the association among the
sleep quality measures from sensor data and surveys using
more advanced sleep trackers that can provide detailed sleep
levels, e.g., REM, light, and deep sleep.
TABLE IV
T HE Two-Sample t-Test SUMMARY OF PHONE USE VS . NOT USE DURING
BED - TIME . F OR THE THREE TYPES OF PHONE USE THE DEGREES OF
FREEDOM ( DF ) ARE 3674, 2254, AND 3698, RESPECTIVELY.
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TABLE V
T HE Two-Sample t-Test SUMMARY OF PHONE USE DURING PRE - BED - TIME
AND BED - TIME . F OR THE THREE TYPES OF PHONE USE THE DEGREES OF
FREEDOM ( DF ) ARE 266, 323, AND 257, RESPECTIVELY. PU AND SQ
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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