How Internet Addiction Is Affecting Your Sleep

Using your phone close to bedtime either to browse the internet, shop or chat to friends can lead to poor sleep quality. What’s more, and perhaps more disturbing, is that sleep deprivation can lead to depression and ADHD, especially in children, and other psychological and behavioural problems.

Below are some of the reasons how the internet affects your sleep:

• Cognitive problems

Responding to a message or playing a game on the internet can lead to a surge of adrenaline in our body. This extra energy will not be helping you out when you finally put your head on the pillow. It may also increase the levels of cortisol in your body, which is a hormone that causes you to feel under pressure.

• Responding to messages

If someone emails or messages you just before sleep, you may feel compelled to respond, out of good social manners; but this can lead to another message, and before you know it, that one message has ruined your sleeping pattern. Social media also plays a part in disrupted your sleeping patterns.

• Anxiety and Depression

A study compiled last year showed that compulsive use of the internet can lead to depression and anxiety. In this study, published in Psychology Today, it showed that using social media and the internet can lead to poor sleep quality, which generally results in irritability and a lack of concentration, as well as feelings of anxiety and depression.

• Display lights before bed

Most of our phones have a display light. Experts have suggested that looking at the light close to bedtime increases melatonin in your bloodstream. The increase in this hormone can lead to interrupted sleep patterns, leading you to toss and turn during the night, and feeling exhausted the next day.

In this day and age, it’s difficult to stay away from the internet. It’s become part of our lives – you reading this right now is using the internet. With that said, we can still control the hours when we use the internet so that it doesn’t cut into our sleep.

If you’d like to conquer your internet addiction, feel free to contact our professional psychologists today.

Related Tags: Psychologists Melbourne | Depression Treatment Melbourne