A good night’s sleep is important for your health. Chronic sleep disturbance can lead to cognitive impairment and increase the risk of stroke and heart attack. And getting enough rest is a big problem for teens, who are experiencing sleep woes due to factors including nighttime technology use, busy schedules and heavy homework loads. American adults also have trouble sleeping, with 70% of adults reporting that they get insufficient sleep at least one night a month, according to the American Sleep Apnea Association.
Much has been said about the blue light emitted from our devices, but the way technology hijacks our sleep goes much deeper than that. Sleep experts say it’s the content we watch that has the biggest impact on our sleep.
So what should we do about it? Sure, you can leave your phone in another room at night, but that may not be feasible for adults who want to be contacted in case of an emergency. The easiest solution is to eliminate the temptation to scroll altogether. Tools from tech companies can help, including new features from TikTok and Instagram, two oft-cited sources of nighttime distraction.
If we get scary news, a scary movie or an annoying email from work right before bedtime or in the middle of the night, the stress hormone cortisol can increase. A spike in cortisol boosts energy by moving glucose from a stored state to an active state in the body. “It’s like eating a candy bar,” says Jamie Zeitzer, MD, co-director of the Stanford Center for Sleep and Circadian Sciences. Coming down from that energy rush can be difficult.
Positive stuff can be just as disruptive because it can increase the amount of dopamine or norepinephrine in the brain, two neurotransmitters Dr. Zeitzer says that can stimulate the thalamus—the brain’s information-relay center—and disrupt the brain-wave oscillations needed for sleep.
Worrying about not getting sleep can make things worse. When we worry that we won’t be able to fall asleep again, explains Dr. Zeitzer, we can’t actually go back to sleep because that worry releases more cortisol.
If any of this sounds familiar, don’t be discouraged. Sleep and digital-media experts suggest trying these things:
Know your triggers. Not all screen activity is bad for sleep. Start by assessing what stresses or excites you when you look at your phone — and what helps calm you down. You should also be aware of how much time you are spending on your device. We lose track of time when we’re on our phones, which can eat into the seven hours of sleep a night doctors say adults need (teenagers need eight to 10 hours).
Reconfigure your habits. Once you identify which screen-related activities bother you, shift those activities to earlier in the evening and do more relaxing activities closer to bedtime, says Nitun Verma, MD, spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Do it. He says that telling patients not to use screens an hour or two before bedtime is too distressing for some people, and eventually leads to instability. Instead, he advises people to reduce their levels of screen-induced emotions and arousal during the evening so it’s “like a plane landing.”
make a list. If you tend to worry at night about what will happen the next day, some sleep experts suggest making a to-do list before bed so you don’t keep yourself awake making a mental list. You don’t need to exit. Paper and pen: The Notes app on your phone makes this easy, or try one of the note-taking apps mentioned here.
Use technology to counter technology. You may soon be able to curb late-night TikTok scrolling. The video-sharing app, owned by ByteDance Ltd., is testing a new sleep-reminder feature. When you specify a bedtime in TikTok, the app will mute push notifications for the next seven hours and ask you to turn it off. In 2021, Tiktok started turning off night-time notifications for teenagers.
Thanks to a new feature introduced this week, Instagram users have the ability to set times in the app when they don’t want to be disturbed. When Quiet Mode is enabled, you won’t receive notifications, and the Meta Platforms Inc.-owned app will send an auto-reply to anyone who DMs you to let them know you’re offline. The app will prompt teens to turn on Quiet Mode if they are on Instagram between midnight and 4 a.m.
There are more options on the phone itself.
You can turn on Do Not Disturb on an iPhone or Android phone during the hours you choose, during which you can only allow calls or notifications from certain people or apps. In the iPhone’s Sleep Focus setting, you can set sleep goals and create bedtime reminders as well as enable Sleep Screen, which dims your lock screen when you’re asleep.
iPhones also have a wind down feature while Android phones have a bedtime mode, which puts your phone on silent for the time of your choosing.
Just look at the time. Many of us tap our phone screen to check the time in the middle of the night. It can tempt us to unlock our phones and keep scrolling. If you followed the other steps listed here, you should be able to protest. You can also buy an alarm clock just for that purpose.
Create a family tech plan. Leaving your phone outside the bedroom may not be practical for many adults, but I recommend parents keep all devices out of children’s bedrooms. Andrea Davis, founder of Better Screen Time, a company that educates families about healthy digital habits, suggests parents create a technology plan with their kids that outlines when, where and how to use devices. can be used. She says that parents should also follow the rules. She didn’t trust herself not to see the phone in bed, so she agreed to spend the night with her kids charging her phone in another room. Her husband keeps his phone in the bedroom in case of an emergency.
Restart your sleep routine. If you still wake up in the middle of the night and find yourself ruminating, don’t continue to toss and turn, says Vijay Ramanan, M.D., a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic. He suggests getting up within 15 minutes and resuming the routine that helped you fall asleep in the first place. Only turn to your phone to find a soothing meditation, audiobook or podcast.