In the age of constant cell phone use, we are beginning to see all kinds of affects that cell phones have on our lives and our health. I have heard it mentioned that staying away from lit screens before bed can help you fall asleep more easily and improve the quality of sleep. Usually, I have no trouble sleeping but lately I have been struggling to fall asleep and also waking up in the middle of the night, unable to go back to sleep. In search of possible solutions, I wonder if avoiding my phone before I go to bed will help with either issue.
The first study I came across, published on Business Insider, studied not only the effects of phone usage on sleep patterns, but the effects of any blue-and-white light typically given off by an electronic screen. Three participants were utilized in this experiment procedure. One participant viewed a tablet when at its highest brightness, the second viewed through blue-light-emitting goggles, and the third viewed through orange-tinted “dark-control” glasses. Each participants melatonin levels were measured after one hour and then two hours. At the end of the study, the results consistently showed that prolonged periods of blue-and-white light exposure increased the suppression of melatonin. Melatonin is a “natural hormone” that your body gives off from the pineal gland. The Pineal Gland is a structure located in the brain that exists as a source of melatonin and controls reactions that are caused by light and darkness. The positive results are only true in “prolongued periods” of time because an increase in suppression of melatonin was only shown after two hours. The melatonin levels are the mechanism that cause the process of falling asleep to take longer. There for, the independent (x) variable is the amount of blue-and-white light taken in before sleep and the dependent (y) variable would be how long it takes to fall asleep. When melatonin levels increase in the body, a person becomes less alert which leads to sleep. Because levels of melatonin were being suppressed, the body never received a signal to sleep. I believe this experiment to be overall effective. I think it was important that they tested different kinds of light to provide stronger evidence that it truly is blue-and-white light rather than another kind. However, there are more types of light than three. Because only three were tested I think he evidence could be made stronger still with a greater number of experiments and more varied types of lighting.
In the short-term the outcome of this study is already negative. But I wonder about long-term affects on our bodies. While I can not find a study hypothesizing that phone usage before bed has long term damages, some articles discuss how long-term sleep deprivation can lead to brain damage. As shown by the previous study, phone usage before bed can disrupt sleep which means sleep loss. Insufficient sleep causes neuron degeneration which is damaging to the brain. Some experiments even show signs that disrupted sleep and loss of sleep can lead to Alzheimer’s. An experiment was carried out that texted the affects of sleep deprivation on mice with human DNA. One group of mice was exposed to 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness while the other group was exposed to 20 hours of light and 4 hours of darkness. At the end of the experiment, the group with less sleep due to more light showed memory impairment. However, it does not seem to me that there is enough proof behind this theory to be sure. While the findings are intriguing enough to provoke more research, animal testing is only somewhat reliable when it comes to human reaction to the same affects. I think more studies are in order before we need to worry too much about getting Alzheimer’s when we lose sleep.
With an article from Business Insider, we know it will be convincing. I’m glad they added various items such as the goggles in an attempt to prove that blue and white light from a screen affects the brain. I wonder though if the “dark control” glasses were meant to mimic the phone being on the lowest brightness setting. After all, I think most people turn their phones down to the lowest brightest when it’s late at night and the room is dark. This led me to wonder whether various brightnesses affect us, as a result I came across an article that discusses how technology affects our eyes… http://www.livescience.com/35579-3-ways-technology-affects-eyes.html… Though this doesn’t describe how it affects our sleep patterns, it does show negative side effects phones can have on us. I agree that more experiments would need to be done in order to determine how different lights and even brightnesses affect us.
Your post is very convincing with lots of references, such as Business Insider, which is one of my favorite place to go for news. I also did a similar post regarding cell phone usage at night may have negative influence on our sleep quality and I had similar conclusion as you summarized— it’s the light disturbed our sleep more than anything else.
And your idea of finding the long-term influence is turly interesting but it does not seems make lot of sense to me. It seems like you did lots of references to back up the hypothesis that lack of sleep may cause memory loss or even Alzheimer’s. While I think we still need more data to prove whether these problems are directly influenced by cellphone usage or not.
Thanks for your effort.
I believe that using a phone before going to bed can have an impact on someone’s sleep patterns. I find that nights that I decide to use my phone or computer close to when I go to bed are the nights I have a awfully tough time falling asleep. However, on those rare nights where I ‘power down’, I fall asleep much more easily. Here is further proof that sleeping can be negatively by using a phone before bedtime. This is very interesting and I like how you pointed out the long-term effects of not getting enough sleep. I always try to get a good night’s rest, but it is much easier said than done, especially in college.
I was just wondering about this topic the other day, actually. I agree with what you said about the study needing to test more types of light in order to be more convincing of the evidence already provided. In addition, I think analyzing a control test subject who was not viewing any kind of light would effectively prove the correlation between screen light (or lack thereof) and melatonin levels. You made a good call looking at both long-term and short-term effects of screen usage before bed, and there’s definitely more work to be done before we start banning electronics from our bedrooms.