Forget about sleepwalking. Generation Z suffers from a disorder that older generations couldn’t have even dreamed up a couple of decades ago: “sleep texting.”
According to a new study from the Villanova College of Nursing, more than 25 percent of college students surveyed said they have texted in their sleep, and 72 percent of them don’t recall sending the texts. The respondents noted that most of these texts are gibberish, yet with the magic of autocorrect, even gibberish can be altered into discernible words. (A quick search of the hashtag #sleeptexting reveals some hilarious examples.)
Sleep texting has plagued people since the advent of the smartphone, but it has noticeably spiked with adolescents and college students in recent years.
Experts say that some people have become “hypervigilant” to the sound of their phones, prompting an instinctive response whenever they hear a notification — even if they’re asleep. About 93 percent of surveyed students said they kept their smartphone close by (e.g. next to their bed or on their pillow), and more than half said they don’t silence their phones at night, which explains why this trend has become so prevalent.
Unsurprisingly, sleep texters reported a lower sleep quality.
Throughout the day, Gen Zers check their phones an average of 60 times a day. Nearly half of them spend a total of 10 hours on their devices. It’s a tough habit to break, especially when the smartphone is always within reach.
This is yet another consequence of smartphone addiction, or nomophobia, which is why so many psychologists seem to be dedicating their time these days to the root cause of this parasomnia. It’s been blamed for mental disorders, car accidents, and even failed relationships. Now it’s being blamed for embarrassing text messages.
Unlike sleepwalking, sleep eating, and other forms of parasomnia, there’s an easy cure for sleep texting. Smartphone users can simply set the phone to airplane mode or place the phone in another room when they go to bed.
Good luck convincing a teenager or college kid to do that.
Brendan Pringle (@BrendanPringle) is writer from California. He is a National Journalism Center graduate and formerly served as a development officer for Young America’s Foundation at the Reagan Ranch.
