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I believe what science is saying. I’m just not going to follow it. If I try to sleep without reading something my brain will start ruminating on things and then I’m definitely not getting to sleep. All my reading materials are on a screen.
Science means knowing better than trusting reports that affirm preconceived notions.
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/21/g-s1-55153/screens-and-sleep-maybe-not-so-bad
I believe science, that’s why I use my tablet instead
I work incredibly hard during the day so it’s not hard for me to fall asleep at night even if I’m staring at my phone and even if I stare at it first thing when I wake up in the morning. My circadian rhythms cannot be defeated. I love sleeping all night & working me arse off all day.
It’s a matter of effort vs reward. Will it make it easier to sleep? Yes. Will it make it easier enough to be worth not using my phone? No.
Just because I don’t follow the recommendation doesn’t mean I disbelieve it. Science also says I should eat better and exercise more and do less drugs 🤷♂️
Drugs are made with science
It’s actually neutral on the subject of what you should do. That is for medicine and public health policy, or even personal choice.
some things we do just to see how bad they’ll make us feel
Me trying not to murder my partner who I love very much when her phone suddenly blasts out Instagram brain-rot at 11pm and I’m trying to maintain a vaguely healthy bedtime ritual.
Science is totally right here, I have no doubt. It’s just… that I have zero regard for my own health.
I don’t use my phone, but I do use an ereader. Maybe when real books become cheaper or the library becomes more convenient I’ll ditch that habit.
Books can definitely be expensive but they’re one item on an ever shortening list of things that corpos can’t claw back from you after purchase. For that reason, they’re money well spent if you ask me!
I mean, those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. I can believe the science AND ALSO engage in behaviors it says are unhealthy for me.
I have night light mode on my phone. So I’m good!!!
That’s not a scientific thing tho ! Proven to have no effect in fact.
Apple wouldn’t lie to me.
Proven*
Samples sizes are always small, confounding variables poorly controlled and control groups often contaminated.
Long term effect are also poorly studied.
Proven to have no effect in fact.
I thought the blue light was the problem.
I agree. I believe science but I seriously think the BIPM (Bureau International des Poids et Mesures) is wrong. They made SI bad by glossing over the necessary base unit of angle, there should be 8 base dimension, not 7.
Except it’s not a unit, it’s a unitless ratio. You’d have one for every number of dimension. The mol is arguably the extra one.
I seriously disagree with you, your you’re wrong.
here’s an article which supports my reasoning https://arxiv.org/pdf/2108.05704
If’s hard to believe when my circadian rhythm was still fucked long before I had a screen I could take to bed.
Just because I believe doesn’t mean I listen.
I’ve been trying to talk my wife into dropping the brightness to 50% for years. Her phone is so bright it keeps ME up at night on the other side of the bed. I have to set up a light shield to go to sleep :P
Don’t call me put like this just after I wake up!
I get why you shouldn’t use it before bed but why not after waking up? If it keeps you awake shouldn’t it help you wake up?
allegedly
you are priming your brain for distraction
that info comes from Julie Morgenstern, an organizing & productivity consultant, so I dunno how scientific it is…
That is under the purview of my field of science (Industrial Organization Psychology), so it can be plenty scientific. However looking at her bio she is not an IO psychologist and has no formal training on the subject so take anything she says with a grain of salt.
God damn, I can’t find any solid research that backs up the claims of it being bad for you, granted I didn’t do a thorough search, but I did still look and came out empty handed.
Just after you wake up, for about 30-60 minutes, you’re in a state known as sleep inertia. The CDC recommends not doing critical tasks during this period, but that could just be because it affects performance. They do also say that bright light can more quickly restore performance, which a phone screen most certainly is.
So, let’s look into it a bit more. Granted, I can’t find anything more than a couple psychologists saying this, so take it with a grain of salt, but it seems like it mostly does come down to you priming your brain for distraction, as was initially stated. You have the least amount of built-up fatigue when you wake up, but if you go on the app that is designed to take as much time and attention of yours as possible, then you are giving away your least-fatigued time of the day to social media, before you do anything productive.
The more things you do in a day, the more fatigued your brain gets, and the harder it is to actually get other things done afterward. On top of that, it can also just be a behavioral thing. If you repeatedly get on your phone every time after you wake up, you are telling your brain “waking up = get on phone,” and not something like “waking up = get out of bed and brush teeth” or “waking up = get breakfast.”
This can build a dependency over time, which then leads you to, as previously mentioned, taking the time you are least mentally fatigued, fatiguing your brain with high-speed flows of information, and only then actually expending the remainder of your energy on everything else you need to do.
Also, it’s forbes
That’s a good way to start my work day then because I’m constantly moving from one fire to another.
