Surprising Side Effects Of Using Your Phone Before Bed Time

Recent research finds that browsing through your mobile phone and its blue light makes it harder for you to fall asleep.

It is widely believed that the blue light emitted from phones disrupts the secretion of melatonin and sleep cycles.

To reduce this blue light emission and eye strain, Apple introduced an iOS feature called Night Shift in 2016; a feature that converts screen colors into warm colors after sunset.

Android phones have recently been tracked with the same option, and now most smartphones have some kind of night mode that helps users sleep better.

What Does The Night Mode On Your Phones Do?

Until recently, claims of having a better sleep due to Night Shift were doctrinal.

However, a new study from Brigham Young University (BYU) published in the journal Sleep Health, challenged the opinion of mobile phone manufacturers and found that the performance of Night Shift does not improve sleep.

To explore this view, BYU psychology professor Chad Jensen and researchers from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center compared the sleep effects of people in three categories:

-those who use their phone at night and Night Shift function are open,

– those who use their phone at night without Night Shift and

-those who have never used a smartphone before of sleep at all.

Study Results

“In all samples, there was no difference in the three groups,” Jensen said. “Night Shift is no higher than using your phone without Night Shift or not using the phone at all.”

The study involved 167 adults between the ages of 18 and 24 who use cell phones every day. They were asked to spend at least eight hours in bed and put an accelerometer on their wrist to record their sleep activity. People assigned to use their smartphone had an app installed to monitor their phone use.

Estimated results included total sleep time, sleep quality, wake-up after bedtime and duration of sleep.

After not finding significant differences in sleep results in three categories, the researchers divided the sample into two distinct groups: one that averaged about seven hours of sleep and the other that slept less than six hours per night.

The group that got seven hours of sleep, which is close to the recommended eight to nine hours a night, saw little difference in sleep quality based on phone usage.

People who have not used the phone before bed are experiencing high quality sleep in relation to those with normal phone use and those who use Night Shift.

‘You Fall Asleep Faster When You’re Tired’

Within the six-hour group, which had a minimum amount of sleep, there was no difference in sleep outcomes depending on whether participants used Night Shift or not.

“This suggests that when you’re very tired you fall asleep no matter what you do before you go to bed,” Jensen explains. “Sleep pressure is so high there is no effect of what happened before bedtime.”

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