Revenge bedtime procrastination: why you stay up on your phone.

What it is

Floor Kroese and colleagues introduced the term in 2014: bedtime procrastination is failing to go to bed at the time you intended, while nothing outside you prevents it. In their survey of 177 people, those with weaker self-regulation reported more of it, and more of it went with reports of too little sleep, beyond what demographics or self-control explained.

Why “revenge”

The popular name adds a motive. After a day that belonged to work, children or other people, the late evening is the first time that feels like your own, so you stretch it. Researchers have begun to use the name too: a 2026 study of 393 military service members found that those with more role overload reported more bedtime procrastination, and both went with poorer day-to-day functioning.

What the phone has to do with it

Liese Exelmans and Jan Van den Bulck surveyed 844 adults in Flanders, aged 18 to 94:

• Six in ten took their mobile phone with them to the bedroom.
• Sending or receiving texts or calls after lights out went with worse sleep quality: longer to fall asleep, less efficient sleep, more disturbance and more trouble during the day.
• Phone use at bedtime went with getting up later, more insomnia symptoms and more fatigue; the links with fatigue and late rising were stronger among younger adults.

It was a survey, so it shows that the two go together, not that the phone is the cause. But the phone makes procrastinating easy: there is always one more thing to read.

How to stop

1. Take your own time earlier. If the late hour is your “me time”, the need is real: put some of it before the last hour, so it does not have to be stolen from sleep.
2. Give the phone a bedtime, 30 to 60 minutes before yours, on a charger outside the bedroom.
3. Use an alarm clock, so the phone has no reason to be by the bed.
4. Make the last hour pleasant without a screen: a book, music, a bath, a talk. An evening that still feels like yours is easier to end.
5. Do not rely on night mode. In a trial, it did not improve sleep: blue light glasses and night mode.

A full routine: an evening without your phone. Why screens before bed matter: your phone before bed.

Nothing to scroll at midnight

With the phone charging in the hallway, Lychnos Ring is designed to show the time at a turn of the hand and to let a reminder buzz on your finger, with nothing on it to scroll at midnight. It is in development and makes no health claims.

Sources, read 4 November 2026: Kroese, De Ridder, Evers and Adriaanse, bedtime procrastination: introducing a new area of procrastination, Frontiers in Psychology, 2014; Exelmans and Van den Bulck, bedtime mobile phone use and sleep in adults, Social Science & Medicine, 2016; Barrow and colleagues, the characterization of revenge bedtime procrastination in military servicemembers, Military Medicine, 2026. Abstracts read at Europe PMC. General information, not medical advice.