- According to the National Sleep Foundation, more than half of Americans use their cell phones within an hour before bed.
- Experts recommend turning off your devices early to improve your sleep quality.
- Breaking the habit involves redesigning your evening routine by replacing screen time with activities like reading or spending time with family.
Like many of us, Jessica Peoples has heard the warnings about excessive screen time at night. Still, she estimates that she uses her phone for 30 to 60 minutes before bed, most of which is just scrolling. Social media.
“These days we’re trying to limit the amount,” said Peoples, the New Jersey discrimination investigator. “I realized that how much time I spent affected how long it took me to fall asleep.”
According to a study by the National Sleep Foundation, more than half of Americans use their cell phones within an hour of going to bed. Experts say this is the latest time we should turn off our devices.
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Melissa Milanak, an associate professor at the Medical University of South Carolina who specializes in sleep health, said the brain needs to relax well before bedtime to get restorative, deep sleep that helps the body function. Ta.
James Walter uses his phone at his home in Queens, New York, on April 7, 2021. Sleep scientists long ago demonstrated that sleep deprivation is associated with poor health, anxiety, obesity, and several other negative effects. The study is equally conclusive that smartphones specifically affect the circadian clock, which regulates sleep and other hormones. (AP Photo/Jesse Wardalski, File)
“You don’t just take a casserole out of the oven and put it in the fridge. It needs to cool,” Milanac says. “Our brains need to do that, too.”
It may not be easy to change your bedtime habits, but sleep deprivation has long been associated with anxiety, obesity, and other negative outcomes. Research shows that smartphones specifically impact the circadian clock, which regulates sleep and other hormones.
“There are a million ways screens can cause sleep problems,” says Lisa Strauss, a licensed psychologist who specializes in cognitive-behavioral therapy for sleep disorders.
He says the brain processes electrical light as sunlight, not just the much-maligned blue light from smartphones. This suppresses melatonin production and delays deep sleep. Even the slightest exposure to bright light in bed can have an effect.
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Of course, scrolling through the news, checking email, and being seduced by increasingly customized videos on social media have their own effects.
So-called “technostress” can make you excited and perhaps even trigger a flight or flight response in your brain. And attractively designed algorithms result in many social media users scrolling longer than intended.
“I was about to watch a few videos and go to sleep, but 30 minutes later,” Milanac said.
While much of the scientific research in online media focuses on adolescents and young adults, Strauss says most of her clients who suffer from insomnia are middle-aged. “People are getting sucked into these video rabbit holes, and more and more people are getting hooked,” she says.
How to break a habit
The challenge is not only to reduce phone use in bed, but also to reduce phone use at night. That means redesigning your routine, especially if you’re using your phone as a way to decompress.
It helps create rewarding alternative behaviors. The obvious candidate is reading a physical book (e-readers are better than cell phones, but they still cast artificial light). Milanak also uses the time before bed to take a warm bath, listen to a podcast, make the next day’s school lunch, spend time with family, or call relatives in another time zone. I suggest using it.
“Make a list of things you love and can’t get done. This is the perfect time to do something screen-free,” she said. Use her notepad to write down your to-do list for the next day so you don’t have to ruminate in her bed.
Practice these activities in a separate room to practice associating bed with falling asleep. If you don’t have another private haven in your home, “establish distinct microenvironments for wakefulness and sleep,” Strauss says. That might mean reading a book while sitting on the other side of the bed, or it might just be facing the other side with your feet on the headboard.
Finally, isolate your phone in another room, or at least on the other side of the room. “Environmental control can sometimes work better than willpower, especially when you’re tired,” she says.
What if it doesn’t feel realistic to quit?
There are ways to reduce the damage. Just like setting your phone to night mode at a scheduled time each day and lowering the screen brightness every night, it’s better than doing nothing. Hold your phone at an angle, away from your face, to minimize light intensity.
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Minimize tempting notifications by setting your phone to Do Not Disturb mode. This can be adjusted to allow calls and messages from specific people (for example, a sick parent or a child at university). But none of these measures will give you complete control over what you want to watch at night, Strauss said.
She also recommended asking yourself why checking social media is such a late-night treat.
“Think about the larger structure of the day,” she said. Everyone is entitled to some solitude to relax, but “maybe you should be more selfish early on to get what you need.”
