Smartphone Mediated Tracking and Analysis of Sleep Patterns in Indian College Students

Abstract

Sleep is one of the essential bio-makers for human health. Poor sleep is associated with reduced cognitive performance. With most smartphone users in India being college students, the focus is now on exploring smartphone usage�s impact on students� sleep. Umpteen news articles in India have reported binge-watching, social media use during the night, and other mobile phone-related interruptions as causes of improper sleep and irregular sleep patterns. However, such studies may involve bias while self-reporting and are limited to a one-time exercise. To understand the reality, we need to accurately quantify the sleep duration, patterns, mobile usage before and after bedtime, number and duration of interruptions. In this first-of-its-kind study in India, we infer novel insights into the sleep patterns of a cohort of 40 college students. We implement a mobile sensing-based approach for the study by installing a custom-developed mobile app on all phones. We extract sleep activity and infer the sleep duration, bed-in and wake-up times, and interruption duration from the sensor data collected from the phone�s built-in sensors. The study brings about new insights into college student sleep patterns and, interestingly, shows that students have a regular sleep cycle and good sleep quality. Only one-fourth of the students revealed irregular sleep patterns, and we did not observe any mobile-related interruptions 30 min past bedtime.