It’s ok – your iPad isn’t responsible for your lack of sleep

We have all been there. It is time to go to bed, but there’s just one more news story/Facebook update/tweet that you need to read and before you know it the birds’ dawn chorus are warming up. So are phones and laptops actually responsible for us not getting as much speep as we used to.

Well some new Australian research claims that gadgets, phones and laptops haven’t actually impacted on our sleeping patterns.

University of Sydney researchers took data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and used three major years 1992, 1997 and 2007 to assess sleeping patterns. After following the data, it was found that in 1992 on an average an adult slept 8 hours and 20 minutes. In 1997, an adult slept for 8 hours and 33 minutes.

However in 2006, when the Internet started taking over our lives, Aussies slept for 8 hours and 30 minutes. Just three minutes less.

The researchers were of the view, “Public health concerns over declining sleep duration do not appear to be warranted. The time allocated to sleep by Australian adults appears to have withstood the challenges of societal and technological change during this period”.

The researchers said with their research they have saved computers and other electronic gadgets from being blamed in the future.

Not everyone agrees with their conclusions though. Gizmodo ran this story back in 2010.