Turtle data
8 in 10 women end most nights with a phone or TV
Key findings
82% of women keeping Turtle's morning sleep diary (about 420 women, January to September 2026) said they used a phone or watched TV before sleep on most nights. Women rated 69% of screen nights and 69% of screen-free nights as good sleep or better. Source: Turtle Method member data, turtlemethod.com/data/phone-before-bed/.
women end most nights with a phone or TV before sleep
8 in 10 women who keep Turtle's morning diary say they spent the time before sleep on a phone or watching TV on most nights. Across 15,000 diary nights from January to September 2026, the average woman answered "yes" on 76% of her nights, and 32% said yes every single night they answered.
Share of women answering "yes" on at least half of their diary nights, by age
Source: Turtle Method member diary data, Jan to Sep 2026 · CC BY 4.0
Younger women are the most likely to scroll
The habit runs across every age group with enough diary keepers to report. It's highest among women aged 25 to 34 (85%) and still close to eight in ten for women aged 45 to 54 (78%).
| Age | Most nights | Women |
|---|---|---|
| 25 to 34 | 85% | about 110 |
| 35 to 44 | 81% | about 170 |
| 45 to 54 | 78% | about 100 |
| All women | 82% | about 420 |
Sleep quality looked much the same either way
We also compared each woman with herself. Among about 160 women who logged at least three nights with a screen and three without, 69% of screen nights were rated "good" or better, against 69% of screen-free nights. That's a self-rating, and it doesn't tell us anything about cause: women may skip the phone on nights they're already tired, and a diary can't measure how long the screen was on.
What the research says
In a small laboratory study, reading on a light-emitting e-reader before bed, compared with a printed book, delayed the body clock, made it take longer to fall asleep and left people less alert the next morning.
Chang AM, Aeschbach D, Duffy JF, Czeisler CA (2015). Evening use of light-emitting eReaders negatively affects sleep, circadian timing, and next-morning alertness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1418490112
A survey of adults in Belgium linked using a mobile phone after lights out with poorer sleep quality and more fatigue.
Exelmans L, Van den Bulck J (2016). Bedtime mobile phone use and sleep in adults. Social Science & Medicine. doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.11.037
Questions people ask
How many women use their phone or watch TV before bed?
In Turtle's sleep diary data, 82% of women said they used a phone or watched TV before sleep on most nights, and 32% said so every night they answered.
Do women sleep worse after using a phone in bed?
In our diary data, self-rated sleep quality was about the same: 69% of screen nights and 69% of screen-free nights were rated good or better. Laboratory studies have found screens before bed can delay sleep, so this is a pattern, not proof either way.
Method
Turtle's morning diary asks "TV or phone before sleep?" (yes or no) and how well you slept. We counted women who answered on 5 or more nights between 1 January and 30 September 2026, about 420 in all. Women only, staff accounts excluded; every group shown has 50 or more women and sizes are rounded. This shows a pattern, not a cause. Full methodology.
Cite this
Free to use with credit and a link to the source page. The figures and chart on this page are licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Journalists: for another cut of the data (aggregates only, same rules), contact scott@turtlemethod.com. More data on the Turtle data hub.
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