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.
post
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...
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.
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.
That's a good way to start my work day then because I'm constantly moving from one fire to another.
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
counterpoint:
The first reliably documented report of Psilocybe semilanceata intoxication involved a British family in 1799, who prepared a meal with mushrooms they had picked in London's Green Park
It’s actually neutral on the subject of what you should do. That is for medicine and public health policy, or even personal choice.
Science is totally right here, I have no doubt. It's just... that I have zero regard for my own health.
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.
Me using phones : wow, I can sleep at 1am, great.
Me "just going to bed" : great, it's 4am and I'm still overthinking my shortcomings!
Yep. Numbing the thoughts away with constant input helps the body gain the upper hand and let me go to sleep.
I recently tried audio books and they worked surprisingly well for me. I tried some of those "bedtime stories for adults" at first but they were kind of lame. Stephen King's short story collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes did the trick. Just speaker on my phone and set to read one chapter, ~1 hour in this case.
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.
I just listen to podcasts at a volume low enough that I have to try to listen, tires my brain out
It's not a settled issue. There are research papers that show evidence that blue light affects sleep, which is not the same thing as blue light makes your sleep worse.
So does it make sleep better?
For me i trained my mind to quiet when i hear wreck of the edmund fitzgerald. I also use sleep talk down videos, audio only, to distract my brain long enough for sleep to strangle it into submission to avoid yhe darkness.
What's this about right after waking up? (I may have struck this from memory)
I have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome… light has no effect on me. Checkmate scientists!
Me too!
Question: does your schedule slowly morph and change over time or does it stay consistent?
Because I think I have non-24 on top of it and I was wondering if it was part of the normal symptoms or not.
I have a strong feeling I do too, inherited from my mom (both of us self-diagnosed). I also appreciate you calling it a syndrome and not a disorder. It's only a "disorder" because society decided to only accommodate one type of circadian rhythm. Humans have needed people on night watch forever, my money is that this was an advantageous phenomenon.
How were you diagnosed? I've experienced a similar difficulty keeping a consistent sleep schedule but I'd always assumed it was screen related
When it didn’t go away when I was temporarily taken off my adhd meds as a teen. Before that they thought it was just because of the meds. That was apparently also the earliest indication that I would have adult adhd. If you have an adhd doc talk to them about it, it’s pretty common to have both.
Not OP but I was diagnosed by being sent to a sleep specialist. I complained of fatigue to my PCP so they checked me for sleep apnea and during the initial meeting I described my schedule and what is typical for me. At the end of the questioning I said "yeah, I've suspected I have a sleep disorder or something" and she said "you definitely have delayed sleep phase disorder" and BOOM it was in my chart.
Easiest diagnosis ever. It helps if you keep a sleep log for a little bit. I can't guarantee the ease of your diagnosis but mine was just being honest instead of lying and pretending to have a normal day walker schedule.
If's hard to believe when my circadian rhythm was still fucked long before I had a screen I could take to bed.
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
My circadian whatever has had all my life to get used to it. I don't accept complaints now.
If you really wanna ruin your day, apparently late night eating and skipping breakfast also fucks with the rhythm. The body has a few things it uses to keep the internal clock going, not just light.
I didn't know my mom was on Lemmy...
When I wake up all I can think about is brushing my teeth and eating breakfast
What if I'm used to eating late?
Y'know, that's what I was wondering when I heard the report on the study. I'm not sure they actually know (plus many of us, myself included, have a naturally later cycle anyway).
Never liked breakfast. Always made me sick. I'll stick with my pot of coffee and noon banana... (hands shaking, stomach churning)
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.
Also, FYI, when scientists say "blue light" they don't mean literally the colour blue, they mean short wavelength light typically emitted by LEDs.
As far as the hue goes, the results in animal testing have been inconsistent, there's a paper from 2022 that says it has no influence, and this one from 2020 that actually found the opposite to be the case https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)31368-5
In my personal experience I do the exact opposite of all conventional advice as admittedly a diagnosed ADHDer.
I cannot sleep without a good scroll and never have, before phones I had books and before I could read as a child I had music and my mom to read to me.
As an adult if I keep listening to something or reading something intently while comfy I will eventually and fairly quickly fall asleep.
I also sleep much better when I sleep immediately after or while scrolling/reading/doing anything than if I try to sleep "normally".
The number one way for me personally not to fall asleep is to "try" to sleep. Any sort of "ritual" around sleeping or attempt to deprive myself of stimulation and my mind will go pretty crazy with infinite thoughts and infinite random bullshit and I will fling out of bed in an hour full of energy and start projects, after working on something for 10-20 min I'll feel sleepy again and could even fall asleep while doing them easily, much more so than in plain dark.
It also helps me to not have any sort of ritual and just sleep whenever I feel sleepy if the circumstances allow. I have no idea why or how neurotypicals have sleep schedules and I've given up on understanding it. For me, as long as I get 8 hours or so it doesn't actually matter at all when I get them, i will feel as fresh and awake waking up at 3AM as I would at 10PM or 7AM as long as I get my hours.
So I pretty much get 8 hours, and sometimes more every day and I feel nice and fresh when I wake up usually with sad exceptions during particularly rough work weeks where I end up staying up way late.
All's I'm saying is YMMV, I've never had any issues with sleep nor do I feel particularly tired, I don't drink coffee nor alcohol, but if I ever explain this to a doctor they go nuts and assume I have insomnia, they try to offer "treatment" when I literally don't have any problems with this at all.
Blue light being bad is a conspiracy theory by big eyewear to sell more glasses (I'm being tongue in cheek but I think its kinda true). I don't have the link but I read some paper about how its more likely that the reduced blinking rate while watching screens is the real culprit
Weirdly I have a similar conspiracy about noise makers for children. They all tend to come with a colored light, that is super bright. While there are studies that have shown sleeping with a light when you are younger makes you 5x more likely to need corrective lenses when you are older.
https://alfredvalley.itch.io/diedream
Designed to be played before falling asleep,
I like to play chess in my head.
I’d rather spend one hour on my phone before bed than three trying and failing to get my brain to shut up ¯\(ツ)/¯
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.
I need my nebuliser ASMR every morning I have to go to work or I will be very grumpy all day
Wait for real?
Yes. Relaxe Aqui on Youtube and Spotify
How are you supposed to stop being sleepy in the morning without pulling out your phone.
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.
Now that you mention it, my phone is by far the most reliable alarm clock I've ever had. It does DST switches for me. The battery recharges itself. I just never noticed because phones sucked at first.
We have phones doubling as alarm clocks to thank for the technological gains in RTC (realtime clock) chips, and deeper CPU sleep states.
All new chips have robust sleep options these days because phones needed to be reliable alarm clocks when "off".
Efficient RTC chips with alarm pins, born out of that chaotic era
We should also thank Network Time Protocol. And if wireless carriers are using something else, perhaps that too.
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
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