Some students say they text while asleep

People are known to walk, talk and eat while sleeping. Now, there is sleep texting.

A new study from Villanova University, near Philadelphia, found that the habit of using smartphones to message friends while still asleep — and having no memory of doing it — is a growing technology trend among adolescents and young adults. The paper was published in the Journal of American College Health.

“They are intimately attached to their phones,” said Elizabeth B. Dowdell, a nursing professor at Villanova University and the lead author of the study. Adolescents and young adults can average 60 to 100 text messages a day, she said.

Though sleepwalking comes from the body’s internal signals, texting while sleeping is usually prompted by external sounds, Dowdell said.

It’s the buzz, beep or tweet that makes the person automatically reach for the phone. That sound gives them a sense of happiness, she said.

The researchers interviewed 372 students at two Northeast colleges with an average age of 19.7 years — 75 percent were women and 25 percent men. All of the participants had a smartphone, and 93 percent reported keeping their phone with them at night. One-third of respondents reported that they answered a call while they were asleep. Twenty-five percent of the students admitted they texted while asleep. Of those, 86 percent were women, the study found.

Men, the researchers discovered, used their phones differently.

Women in the study were more likely to keep their phone in bed; men were more likely to keep their phone next to their bed.

One student resorted to wearing mittens to bed to prevent sleep texting, Dowdell said.

The text messages that were sent are more embarrassing than dangerous, researchers found.

“For most of them it is really silly,” said Dowdell. They are texting their friends or peers, not bosses or co-workers, she said.

And though sleep-texting might seem funny, there can be a serious consequence: sleep deprivation, experts said.