Like many of us, Jessica Peoples has heard warnings about excessive screen time at night. Still, she estimates spending 30 to 60 minutes on her phone before bed, mostly browsing social media.
“Recently, I’ve been trying to limit the amount,” says Peoples, a discrimination investigator for the state of New Jersey. “I notice that how much time I spend affects how long it takes me to fall asleep.”
More than half of Americans spend time on the phone an hour before bed, according to a survey by the National Sleep Foundation. This is the last time we should turn off devices, experts say.
The brain needs to relax a lot before bed to get the deep, restorative sleep that helps the body function, said Melissa Milanak, an associate professor at the Medical University of South Carolina who specializes in sleep health.
“You wouldn’t take a casserole out of the oven and put it in the fridge. It needs to cool down,” Milanak said. “Our brains need to do this too.”
Changing your bedtime routine may not be easy, but insufficient sleep has been linked to anxiety, obesity, and other negative outcomes. Research shows that smartphones are particularly harmful to the circadian clock that regulates sleep and other hormones.
“There are a million and one ways that screens can create sleep problems,” said Lisa Strauss, a licensed psychologist who specializes in cognitive-behavioral treatment of sleep disorders.
The brain, she said, processes electrical light — and not just the much-maligned blue light from a smartphone — as sunlight. This suppresses melatonin production, delaying deep sleep. Even little exposure to bright light in bed has an impact.
Of course, browsing the news, checking emails, or being tempted by increasingly personalized videos on social media has its own consequences.
So-called “tech stress” stimulates you – possibly even triggering the brain’s escape or escape response. And algorithms designed to be engaging force many social media users to scroll longer than they intended.
“Now it’s been 30 minutes, when you wanted to watch some videos and fall asleep,” Milanak said.
Although much of the scientific research on online media focuses on teenagers and young adults, Strauss said the majority of his clients who suffer from insomnia are middle-aged. “People go down these video rabbit holes and more and more people are hooked,” she said.
The issue is not just restricting phone use in bed, but also phone use at night. This means redesigning your routine, especially if you use your phone as a way to decompress.
It helps create replacement behaviors that are rewarding. An obvious competitor is reading a physical book (e-readers are better than phones, but they still emit artificial light). Milanak also suggests taking advantage of this hour before bed to take a hot shower, listen to a podcast, prepare school lunches for the next day, spend time with your family, or call a relative in another time zone.
“Make a list of things you like that never get done. It’s a great time to do things that don’t involve screens,” she said. Using a notepad to write down the next day’s to-do list helps prevent you from ruminating in bed.
Do these activities in another room to train yourself to associate the bed with falling asleep. If there is no other private refuge at home, “establish a distinct microenvironment for waking and sleeping,” Strauss said. This could mean sitting on the other side of the bed to read or even turning to the other side with your feet on the headboard.
Finally, store your phone in another room, or at least on the other side of the room. “Environmental control may work better than willpower, especially when we are tired,” she said.
There are ways to reduce the damage. Putting your phone in night mode at a scheduled time every day is better than nothing, as is reducing the screen brightness every night. Hold the phone away from your face and at an oblique angle to minimize light intensity.
Minimize tempting notifications by putting your phone on do not disturb mode, which can be adjusted to allow calls and messages from certain people – for example, a sick parent or a child at university. But none of these measures give you carte blanche to see whatever you want at night, Strauss said.
She also recommended asking yourself why checking social media has become your nightly reward.
“Think about the larger structure of the day,” she said. Everyone deserves solitary time to relax, but “maybe be more self-indulgent earlier so you have what you need.”
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EDITOR’S NOTE: Albert Stumm lives in Barcelona, Spain, and writes about food, travel and wellness. Find his work at
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