Teens are known for being dependent on their cell phones — exchanging as many as 60 text messages a day — but are they so attached to their devices that they’ll respond to texts while they’re sleeping?
Yes, say some experts — and the behaviour is becoming more common. Earlier this week, a CBS affiliate in Philadelphia spoke with Dr. Elizabeth Dowdell, a professor of nursing at Villanova University, who believes that more and more teens may be texting in their sleep.
“It’s something new. We’re just starting to get a handle on it,” Dowdell told The Huffington Post. “I think that we will start to see more of this as cell phones become much more accessible at all ages.”
With sleep texting, the beep of a cell phone lightly awakens a person, so he or she will reach over and respond to a message (sometimes with jibberish). However, the person has no memory of having done so in the morning.
Dowdell explained that while she has not conducted research on this particular phenomenon, she’s seen enough anecdotal evidence to suspect that it is on the rise.
The professor initially heard about the practice from one of her students who mentioned that she had been texting people while she was sleeping. When Dowdell went on to bring the subject up in one her classes, many students admitted having done the same. People said they learned about their behaviour either from friends who were perplexed by their messages, or by reviewing their texting history themselves.
Dowdell currently studies teens and online behaviour and noted that many of the parents she encounters in her research say that their kids are too tied to technology and aren’t getting enough sleep. She believes the beeping of their cell phones late at night could be contributing to the problem. Dr Michael Breus, a clinical psychologist and sleep specialist, confirmed to The Huffington Post that based on what he’s heard from his patients, he, too, believes that sleep texting may be increasing — and among adults, no less.
“With the advent of texting, I would absolutely say there’s a significant uptick in this type of thing,” Breus said. Because teens often sleep with their phones next to their beds, they might be more susceptible to sleep texting. (Research has shown that four out of five teens sleeps with their phone nearby.) But Breus said that any person who receives texts at night and keeps his or her phone close — with the ringer on — could be vulnerable to replying back. Still, communicating during sleep isn’t a new activity; texting is just the newest way in which people do so.
Breus noted that people have long answered phone calls in the middle of the night with little recollection the next day. Such behaviour has, for years, been referred to as the “on call effect,” because doctors who get woken up by pages and respond sometimes don’t recall the conversations later.
“It’s basically what we call an arousal disorder. Somebody gets woken up [by an outside stimulus] but is not completely awake from the process of sleeping,” said Breus. “People will reach over, and not even half awake, will start answering their texts.” While there still are no scientific studies on sleep texting to give an indication of how widespread the practice is (or isn’t), reports of doctors noticing the trend started to surface as early as 2011.
