In 2018, smartphones are just an extension of our bodies.
We go everywhere with them, we use them as our primary form of communication, and many of us even sleep beside them.
A new study, published in the Journal of American College Health, posits that sleep-texting is becoming a very real problem for lots of people.
Researchers from Villanova University surveyed more than 300 college students, and discovered 25 percent are sending late-night messages that they have no memory of.
“The majority of the sleep texting students had no memory of the texting behavior as well as who or what they texted,” says lead study author Elizabeth Dowdell. “The lack of memory is not surprising as sleep research has found that people awakened after sleeping more than a few minutes are usually unable to recall the last few minutes before they fall asleep.”
Of course, it doesn’t really sound the same as sleep-walking, since the solution should be pretty straightforward. If you leave your phone somewhere else while you sleep, it’s fairly unlikely you’re going to send bleary-eyed messages you later forget.
But the study does suggest that sleep-texting is becoming a bigger habit among young people, and it’s the kind of thing that’s almost certainly going to end in embarrassment for somebody.
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