Screen Time Sleep Geelong: What 2025 Research Shows

A 2025 University of Melbourne analysis of 1,200 Victorian adults found that those using phones or tablets within 60 minutes of bedtime lost an average 34 minutes of total sleep time each night.

The timing matters because melatonin onset shifts later when blue-light exposure continues past 9pm, a pattern that has grown more common since hybrid work expanded in Geelong after 2022.

Local patterns along the waterfront

Many residents on the Bellarine Peninsula finish shifts at the Ford plant or at Deakin University’s Waurn Ponds campus and then scroll through the same devices while sitting on Eastern Beach. Barwon Health’s community health team recorded a 19 per cent rise in sleep-related referrals from postcodes 3219 and 3220 between July 2024 and June 2025.

Geelong Waterfront parkrun participants who swapped their usual late-night screen sessions for a 5km Saturday loop along the Barwon River walking trail near Shannon Avenue reported steadier energy levels in follow-up surveys conducted by the event organisers.

Evidence and next steps

The Sleep Health Foundation’s national survey, published in February 2025, showed that 41 per cent of regional Victorians keep a device beside the bed, compared with 29 per cent five years earlier. That figure aligns with Barwon Health’s own audit of 340 patients at its Myers Street clinic, where screen-use logs correlated with delayed sleep onset in two-thirds of cases.

Staff at the same clinic now recommend setting a device curfew at 8:30pm and replacing the final hour with a short walk to the rock pool at Eastern Beach or a quiet stretch along the river trail. Patients who followed the routine for four weeks gained between 25 and 40 minutes of additional sleep, according to clinic records released in June.