Jessica Peoples, like most of us, has heard warnings about too many screens at night. Moreover, she estimates that spends 30 to 60 minutes on phone before bed, mostly scrolling through social media.
“Right now, I’m trying to limit the number,” said Halk, a discrimination investigator with the state of New Jersey.
According to a study by the National Sleep Foundation, more than half of Americans spend time on their phones within an hour of going to bed. According to experts, this device should be turned off.
In order to get restorative deep sleep that helps body function, our brains need to wind down long before sleep, says Melissa Milanak, associate professor of sleep health at the Medical University of South Carolina.
“You don’t take it from the oven to the pot and put it in the fridge. We have to cool it,” he said. Our brains have to do that too.”
Changing your ability to sleep may not be easy, but lack of sleep has long been linked to anxiety, obesity, and other negative outcomes.
Research shows that smartphones specifically disrupt the circadian clock, which regulates sleep and other hormones.
“There are a million and one ways that screens can cause sleep problems,” says Lisa Strauss, a licensed psychologist who specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy for sleep disorders.
According to him, the brain processes electric light like sunlight, not just the excessive blue light of a smartphone. It suppresses the production of melatonin, delaying deep sleep. There was very little light in the bed.
Of course, scrolling through the news, checking email or experimenting with more interesting videos on social media pays off.
This is called technostress makes you tense up-maybe cause brain flight or noise flight. Algorithms designed for engagement are forcing many social media users to scroll more than intended.
“After 30 minutes, you’re going to watch some video and go to sleep,” says Milanak.
While most of the research in online media focuses on teenagers and young adults, Straus said most of his clients who struggle with insomnia are middle-aged. “People are going down this rabbit hole, and more and more people are attracted to it,” he said.
The problem is not only limiting the use of the phone in bed, but also the use of the phone at night. So if you use your phone to decompress, rethink your routine.
It helps to create useful substitution properties. Apparently, read physical books (e-readers are better than phones, but they are put on artificial light).
Milanak also recommends taking a warm bath an hour before bed, listening to a podcast, preparing lunch for the next day, spending time with family, or calling relatives in another time zone.
“Make a list of your favorite things. This is a good time to do things that don’t involve a screen,” she says. Using a notebook to write down your to-do list for the next day helps you avoid rummaging in bed.
To associate bed with sleep, pretend you are in another room. If there’s no other shelter in the house, “create separate micro-environments for waking and sleeping,” says Straus.
This can mean sitting on the other side of the bed reading, or even turning to the other side with your feet on the headboard.
Finally, continue the phone in another room, or at least across the room. “Environmental control can be better than power, especially when we are sick.”
There are ways to mitigate the damage. Setting the phone to night mode at a set time every day is not just turning off the screen brightness every night.
Hold the phone away from your face and at an angle to reduce the intensity of the light.
Put down calls and minimize annoying notifications, which can be customized to allow calls and messages from certain people, like sick parents or kids at university, to go through.
But none of these activities get you a ticket to watch whatever you want for the night, Straus said.
She also suggests asking whether checking social media is your nightly reward.
“Think of the larger structure of the sun,” he said. Everyone deserves some time alone to relax, but “maybe you can indulge yourself sooner, so you will have what you need”.
