The use of citizen science has expanded in recent years, especially in biomedical and public health research. It has also been highlighted as a strategy to improve the linkage between research, education, and action. Thus, there is a need for public health prevention strategies to change night-time smartphone behavior to eventually improve sleep behavior and health.Ĭitizen science, defined as public participation in scientific research in which the public are engaged directly in one or more of the research processes has proven to be an effective strategy to maximize the social impacts of research. Because poor and short sleep is a well-known risk factor for obesity, cardio-vascular diseases, diabetes, and mortality, the increasing 24-hour smartphone use highlights a pressing public health issue. Furthermore, a recent randomized trial with 38 college students found that restricting mobile phone use before bedtime reduced sleep latency and increased sleep duration. Previous studies have shown that night-time smartphone use is related to poor sleep quality and shorter sleep duration. Smartphones are frequently used around the clock. Smartphones have become an integrated part of everyday life, and the increasing and widespread use of smartphones is an inevitable trend in today’s digitized society. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Inquiries for secure data access under conditions stipulated by the Danish Data Protection Agency should be directed at the data manager of the SmartSleep project ( or principle investigator of the SmartSleep project Professor Naja Hulvej Rod ( The project was funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (grant number 7025-00005B). We are therefore not allowed to make them publicly available according to the Danish Protection Agency (Danish data protection legislation ( datatilsynet.dk)) and Danish law. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: The data set contains personally identifiable and sensitive survey data information. Received: JanuAccepted: JPublished: July 21, 2021Ĭopyright: © 2021 Andersen et al. PLoS ONE 16(7):Įditor: Camelia Delcea, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, ROMANIA Public health projects may benefit from combining citizen science with other interventional approaches.Ĭitation: Andersen TO, Dissing AS, Varga TV, Rod NH (2021) The SmartSleep Experiment: Evaluation of changes in night-time smartphone behavior following a mass media citizen science campaign. Using citizen science and mass media appeared to be associated with changes in night-time smartphone behavior. The reduction in sleep problems (54%), recognition of poor smartphone behavior (48%), and the increased focus on night-time smartphone use (42%) were motivational factors for these behavior changes. The participants who had changed their smartphone behavior had primarily taken active precautions to avoid night-time smartphone use, e.g., activating silent mode (36%) or reduced their smartphone use before (50%) and during sleep hours (52%). A total of 15% of the participants who used their smartphone during sleep hours at baseline had changed their night-time smartphone behavior, and 83% of those indicated that they used their smartphone less at follow-up. A follow-up survey aimed at evaluating whether survey-participants had changed their night-time smartphone behavior was carried out two weeks after the campaign. The survey was carried out for one week in 2018, combined with an extensive national mass media campaign focusing on smartphone behaviors and sleep. A total of 8,894 Danish adults aged 16 and above participated in the SmartSleep Experiment, a web-based survey on smartphones and sleep behavior. This study aims to evaluate whether a massive public focus on sleep and smartphone use generated through a large-scale citizen science project, the SmartSleep Experiment, influence participants’ night-time smartphone behavior. The increasing 24-hour smartphone use is of public health concern.
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