Author: Justin Pot / Source: howtogeek.com
Can’t get to sleep? You might as well pick up your phone and scroll through Instagram for a bit, then maybe Facebook, and what was that blog with the funny pictures you used to look at back in the day, does it still exist? Oh yeah there’s like five years of updates here, let’s scroll through that for a bit, just one more page of posts, and…it’s morning.
If this is you, there’s a solution: stop bringing your phone to bed. Your tablet too. Glowing screens in the bedroom are destroying your sleep, and the only solution is to stop using them.
I know this sounds extreme: you love your phone. You probably touch it more often than your kids or significant other, and its various notifications make you feel less alone. But you know you need to sleep better, and leaving your gadgets to charge somewhere else is going to help you do that. Here’s why.
White Light Is Throwing Off Your Rhythm
Your brain is designed to respond to sunlight. Millions of years of adaptations means you’re chemically wired to wake up when the sun comes up and go to sleep when it goes back down. Artificial light is wrecking your sleep by disrupting that natural rhythm.
Your phone is a giant white light that you look directly into . Doing that in bed, right before you attempt to fall asleep, is chemically setting up your brain for failure. There are a few things you can do about this. Research shows that filtering out blue light can help, according to The Atlantic:
In 2013, scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute asked 13 people to use electronic tablets for two hours before bed. They found that those who used the tablets while wearing orange goggles, which filter blue light, had higher levels of melatonin than those who either used the tablets without goggles on or, as a control, with blue-light goggles on.
These chemical changes in your brain are real. Purchasing orange goggles isn’t necessary, either: Night Shift on your iPhone or night mode on Android both shift your entire screen away from the blue parts of the spectrum, and this can help you with sleep.
But you know what’s easier? Not bringing any glowing screens to bed with you. You won’t…
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