We are all guilty of it – checking our phones constantly is something that’s just become part of life. With access to the internet and social media at our fingertips it’s hard not to leave our phones be especially just before bed.

It’s well known that the blue light transmitted from our phones can keep us awake and a new study has further confirmed this.

The research carried out by a team at the University of California, San Francisco together with Ginger.io, a mental health app, found the more people used their smartphones at bedtime, the more likely they are of experiencing disrupted sleep patterns. This included taking much longer to fall asleep and worse sleep quality throughout the night.

The study involved 653 participants who were asked to fill out a survey online and download an app that banked how many hours an individual’s phone screen was active. Their activity with the app was collected over a period of 30 day use for each person.

The results found that 136 participants showed a link between more screen time and less overall hours asleep together with more of these hours spent partially awake or disrupted. The more time spent gazing at our smartphone in the hour we intend to go to bed saw a greater increase in the amount of time in bed but awake.

“I am a big fan of technology and think technology can help us solve many problems,” said Gregory Marcus, co-author of the research. “However, I think that this suggests that we need to think carefully about how to optimise the use of that technology and understand the consequences of that use.”

While it has just become a seemly harmless habit for most people, disrupted sleep and lack of sleep can be a major cause of long-term health problems such as obesity, diabetes and depression.

Although it may seem to be pushing the blame on smartphones, the authors of the study aren’t sure if people who are already bad at sleeping are just checking their phones more, or if smartphone use is a direct cause of bad sleep – only that there is an associated link.

Details of the study were published in the journal PLOS ONE.