If you want to know how to ruin your sex life, read on… Bring your tablet, laptop, netbook, Kindle or smartphone to bed and canoodle with it before sleep instead of canoodling with your significant other. Portability, plug-in earbuds, backlit screens and quiet surfaces for typing have made it popular for people to bring tablets, laptops, e-readers and smartphones to bed for late nite web surfing, reading, email, blogging, texting, watching tv or movies. However, there is a downside to bringing a computer or smartphone to bed. Diminished sex. Recently, a UK study of 2,000 British couples conducted by Broadband Choices found that 15% of the couples reported less sex when one or both brought a computer or reading device to bed before going to sleep. These study subjects reported that spending time on their devices superseded their vices – sex. The average time that computer or smartphone users spent on their devices before sleep was 90 minutes and this 1.5 hour time also pushed back users “bedtime”. And this self-indulgent lack of sleep led to more tiredness and a lower sex drive the next night to recapture the loss of sleep from the night before, thus continuing the cycle of “how to ruin your sex life.”

As a culture, does this type of sexual indifference indicate a desire to be more self-centered instead of interacting and getting sexually intimate with our partners? More evidence… TeleNav, one of the worldwide leaders in GPS systems, conducted a survey recently asking if smartphone users could go without sex for a week vs. go without using their smartphone for a week. Surprisingly, 33% of those surveyed stated they would rather go without sex for a week. Ad Age also reported a poll result that tablet usage is higher in bed than at work, on the go or around other parts of the home.