Pre-Sleep Screen Restriction and Adolescent Sleep

Everyone says no screens before bed, but nobody says for how long. So I ran my own study on it: 8 people, 85 nights, split into three groups (no restriction, 30 minutes screen-free, 60 minutes screen-free).

The actual data collection took about 20 days. The rest of the 8 months went into writing it up and doing the stats properly, since with only 8 people you can't just eyeball the results.

30 minutes screen-free made people feel noticeably more rested. 60 minutes didn't do anything extra on top of that. Wake-ups overnight didn't really change either way, so it looks more like a wind-down effect than an actual change in sleep quality.

Outcome: An 8-person, 85-night study finding that 30 minutes screen-free before bed improves how rested people feel, with no added benefit from a full hour.

What I took from it:

• The generic "no screens before bed" advice is basically right, but nobody tests the actual duration, which is where this got interesting.
• Chasing 8 people to log data every night for 20 days was harder than any of the analysis after.
• Small samples are messy. Most of the 8 months went into picking statistics that wouldn't lie to me about 8 people's worth of data.