Background and Aim: Use of mobile phones by people, especially university students has dramatically increased in recent years. One of the important psychological and behavioral complications of this issue is sleep disorders or lack of sleep quality among students. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of unsafe and excessive use of mobile phones on sleep quality in the students.

Materials and Methods: This cross sectional study included 230 students of Neyshabur University of Medical Science in 2014. To assess the sleep quality we used Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and Gennaro’s questionnaire was used for the assessment of unsafe and excessive use of mobile phone. Using SPSS 16 software, data were analyzed by Pearson correlation, independent T-test, ANOVA and multiple regression tests.

Results: According to the results of this study 50.9% of the students had poor sleep quality.Only10.8% had limited and safe use of their mobile phones. Unsafe and excessive use of mobile phone had significant relationship with variables of study year, place of residence and nativeness, and PSQI showed a significant relationship with age, gender and place of residence (P<0.001).Unsafe and excessive use of mobile phone had significant influence on PSQI in the students and on the four dimensions of this index (P<0.001, R2=0.083).

Conclusion: Unsafe and excessive use of mobile phone can have negative effect on the quality of sleep and this consequently, could influence their educational performance and daily activities. Teaching the students about these complications, and the importance of the quality of sleep and its effect on the educational performance is recommended.

Keywords; Unsafe use, Mobile phone, Sleep quality, Students.

Received: Feb 15, 2016      Accepted: Jul 11, 2016