So, when I get into bed at night, I do a last scan of email/Twitter/Facebook/blogs before putting the phone down and going to sleep.
When my alarm goes off in the morning, I grab my phone and go through my morning routine:
- Check email (delete any junk or emails that don’t require replies)
- Check Twitter (primarily for any @ mentions, and then a quick scan of recent tweets)
- Check Facebook for any messages or notifications (I don’t often read my News Feed)
- Check Reeder to see if there are any posts I am interested in reading
- Check weather
- Finally, I’ll check to see if any apps need to be updated
And then I get up. So if you’re being honest – tell me: does that morning routine sound familiar to anyone?
The topic of smartphones (or any type of cell phone) in the bedroom was something I was wondering about last week when a minister colleague (who shall remain nameless for his/her safety) texted me at 6:15am. This person knows I’m in youth ministry, and so should realize that there is no way that I’m going to be up at 6:15am so I texted him/her back and chided them for sending me a text so early. Their response was, “You keep your phone in the bedroom?!”
I laughed at that, and then was wondering if perhaps that wasn’t the normal thing to do nowadays. So I took an informal poll via Twitter/Facebook and had 43 people respond. Out of the 43 people who responded, 35 (81.4%) said that yes, they do keep their smartphones in the bedroom on their nightstands, and 8 (18.6%) said they kept their phone out of the bedroom. And the ages ranged in all categories – so it wasn’t just old folks keeping their phones out of the bedroom. You can take the poll here if you want.
I suppose this is an indication of our desire to always be connected and not want to miss anything. Sometimes if I’m sleeping lightly in the middle of the night, and I hear my phone buzz, I’ll check in to see what text or email I received. And I know plenty of studies that have been done on the fact that if you are looking at a brightly lit screen immediately before going to bed, it affects your ability to sleep well that night.
So what do you think? Is it bad that our all-in-one devices have now become our alarm clocks and we take them into the bedroom with us? Are there reasons why you think it’s important to keep them IN the bedroom, or OUT of the bedroom?