Get a better night's sleep with this one weird tip

Does it take you longer than 15–20 minutes to fall asleep?

Do you wake up in the middle of the night?

Do you feel sleepy in the afternoon, craving a caffeine fix?

According to sleep researcher Dr. Brandy Roane, these are all signs that you're not getting enough quality sleep, and your gadgets may be a big part of the problem.

Dr. Roane co-authored a new paper that explores how digital media use before bedtime can negatively impact sleep quality in university students. She measured how activities like surfing the internet, reading e-books, and playing videos games affected bedtime, wake time, and how long they slept.

"Every 15 minutes a person indicated they worked on a computer, they had 15 minutes less sleep, on average," Dr. Roane explained.

"If they were surfing the internet, they tended to have longer sleep onset latency… and they tended to wake more in the middle of the night for longer durations. Video games also signified later bedtimes."

But the researchers also found something surprising, and counter-intuitive: students who mixed up their digital media use – performing a variety of different activities before bed – slept longer.

The more diversity in digital media use, the longer the sleep duration.

Why might this be? Dr. Roane says the "engrossment factor" may play a role.

"If you're working on just a single activity, you tend to become engrossed in that activity and you're not always as inclined to check the time," she explains.

"If you're doing multiple different types of activities before bed, it could be that you're trying to wrap things up."

So then, Dr. Roane encourages people to diversify their online activities before bed, so long as they have a cutoff point.

"If you're engaging in digital media use before bedtime it does impact sleep. If you were engaging in more diverse activities, that would probably be helpful. But also choosing to disengage from digital media use about 20–30 minutes before bed would also likely assist in getting to bed earlier."