Indulging in over texting in daytime leads to sleep problems during the night, according to a study conducted by New York University's College of Dentistry.
The new study, published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture, has established a link between sending and receiving text messages to poor sleep patterns.
The researchers arrived at the conclusion after surveying 83 first-year undergraduate students and studying their health and well-being alongside their cell phone texting habits.
They found that people associated with several text conversations throughout the day feel pressurized to respond to messages, even during the middle of the night. The researchers also discovered that as people sleep often with their phone besides them it results in frequent disturbances in their deep sleep, even if they don't really wake up to respond.
The study concluded that text messages not only make people struggle to get a good night's sleep but also result in higher levels of emotional stress and feelings of exhaustion.
"The line is blurring between wakefulness and sleep," Michael Gelb from the New York University's College of Dentistry told The Atlantic. "So, you'll be texting one second and the next second you're asleep, but then you get a ping and the ping awakens you. It's becoming more of a trend because the line is really being blurred between being awake and being asleep."
According to the doctors, texting negatively affects young professionals too because they are required to be on call and reply to work-related queries round the clock.
Majority of the times, people do not remember taking part in conversations late at night and end up looking at poorly spelled messages at the break of dawn, CBC.ca reports.
Gelb suggests people switch off their phone alerts, put it in 'Do Not Disturb' mode, keep it on silent, leave the device outside the bedroom or turn it off 30 minutes before sleeping, KGWreports.
Other health experts have recommended people place their phone upside down to avoid disturbances from the backlight, Tech2 reports.
