SmartSleep Experiment
Danish citizen science project in 2018: a week-long national mass media campaign on smartphones and sleep, tied to a web survey that 8,894 adults completed. Two weeks later, 15% of those who used their phone during sleep hours had changed, almost all by using it less.
- Years
- 2018
- Country
- Denmark
- Topic
- Sleep
- Asks people to
- Stop
- Strategy
- User generated content
- Channel
- RadioTVWebsite
- Audience
- Adults
Evidence
ObservationalPositive
Of participants who used a smartphone during sleep hours, 15% had changed that behaviour two weeks after the campaign, and 83% of them used it less, mostly by taking active steps such as keeping the phone out of reach. No comparison group.
Sponsor (who paid)
- University of Copenhagen researchers with DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation) Academic, lead
Credits (who made it)
Not recorded yet.
Related campaigns
- Phone Sleeps First 2025–now
Sources
- The SmartSleep Experiment: Evaluation of changes in night-time smartphone behavior following a mass media citizen science campaign evaluation · 2021 · DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0253783 · PMID 34288929
Research notes
Partner names from memory; confirm in the PLOS ONE paper. Strategy tag: participation in the survey is the engagement device; consider a 'citizen-science' strategy value. Found through OpenAlex (October 2026 sleep pass, see docs/sleep-campaigns-openalex.md). Findings paraphrased from abstracts; check the paper before quoting a number.
Record cases/smartsleep-experiment.json, updated 2026-10-23· Link to this campaign