September 3, 2010 
There is lots of good data in the new Pew report on “Cell Phones And American Adults“. It shows that people who text a lot also talk on the phone a lot. It shows how adults use text messaging compared to teens. The one that stuck out at me was that 65% of people had slept with their phone.
Why do people do this? I do it if I’m using the phone as an alarm at a hotel, but otherwise, I don’t want the phone beeping at me at night with e-mails (legitimate or spam).
Enabling Healthy Decisions 
On one hand, this seems bizarre and appalling. On another, I can count on one hand the number of mornings over the last 14 days in which I did NOT wake up with the mobile device somewhere in the bed.
I use the “one device as an alarm clock” strawman to rationalize. But it isn’t holding water. Most Americans have a difficult enough time properly sleeping without incessant pinging. My family physician asked me to consider declaring my bedroom a gadget-free zone, probably the most sensible prescription I’ve received yet.
Please don’t tell my wife. She still enjoys sleeping with me.
I make sure to keep a switched on phone as far away as possible at night, (but still in the room).
Advantage is to get up to turn off the alarm, but also to keep away from those WAVES we know not enough about.