Screen Time Before Bed

The other night after binge watching hours of The Office on Netflix, I noticed that not only was I more exhausted than I usually am at the end of a school day, but it also seemed more difficult for me to fall asleep. Additionally, even though I got the same amount of hours of sleep that I normally do, it seemed a lot more difficult for me to wake up in the morning and stay alert.
Over the years, technology has become a bigger and bigger aspect of our daily lives, but is it doing more harm to us than good?

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More than three quarters of the United States population admits to watching Tv or using some type of electronic device within the hour before they go to sleep(https://sleepfoundation.org/media-center/press-release/annual-sleep-america-poll-exploring-connections-communications-technology-use-).
The blue light emitted from technology is one of the main reasons that watching TV before bed is not one of the best ideas in order to get a good nights sleep. Blue light suppresses the release of melatonin, which is typically triggered by the circadian rhythm, or the body’s natural clock. Since the circadian clock operates and secretes hormones according to whichever light the body is exposed to, the more blue light the body is exposed to, the more the body is going to think it has to stay awake and the production of melatonin will be suppressed.

Since it takes so long to fall asleep after looking at blue light for a long period of time, it makes sense that someone would be more tired the next day even if they got the same amount of hours of sleep that they usually do. Forcing yourself to fall asleep before your body clock is prepared to disrupts the circadian cycle. This disruption of the circadian cycle causes the body to get less deep sleep than it usually does because the usual amount of melatonin secreted before bed ends up being secreted much later in your sleep.

According to multiple studies done at Harvard Medical School, the blue light from electronics may be doing more than altering the bodies circadian rhythm. Some of the health risks that may be caused by this issue are diabetes, heart disease, and certain types of cancer. Although the study only included ten people, all of the subjects were placed in the same situations. The shift in their circadian rhythms caused them to have an increase in their blood sugar levels, which is a cause for diabetes.

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4 thoughts on “Screen Time Before Bed

  1. Katherine Guerney

    I also am guilty of binge watching Netflix, especially when I’m about to go to sleep. Sometimes I even fall asleep while watching it. You explained the effect of the blue light on our circadian rhythm really well and your findings were really interesting. Since the study you found only had 10 participants I think it would be cool if there was a study that had a large amount of participants. I found this article that discusses why using phones is also harmful for our sleep cycle. One interesting point the article brought up is that we normally sleep in 1-2 hour cycles and have moments where we wake up that we don’t even realize. If your phone goes off during these times then you can wake up completely. It’s really interesting to me how much electronics can affect us when we are trying to sleep, or even while we are sleeping.

  2. Madeline Elizabeth Dittrich

    i found this article to be interesting because I also wrote an article on the negative effects of television. I agree that screen time before bed is a problem, because it makes it more difficult for people to fall asleep at night. This cuts in to the already limited number of hours of sleep that people get each night. Especially for college student. many of whom barely ever get a good nights sleep. I once heard that it is recommended to stop using electronic devices one hour before bedtime, which in my mind, is extremely unrealistic for any college student

  3. Alyssa Marie Frey

    This was an interesting topic to choose to write about. However, I do not know where the majority of your information comes from other than your two sources at the end. I think you should also have some live links in your blog to make it stronger and maybe just to show where some of your information came from. You could also find a study and go into detail about how watching a screen before bed can impact you, kind of like the pop-quiz we took on this same topic.

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