Technology is great. It helps us to stay connected with loved ones, research important topics for work, and accomplish more in our day-to-day lives. However, the one place you should never interact with technology is in your bedroom.
As tempting as it is to spend a few minutes before bed under your comforter browsing through your phone and checking your messages on social media, the truth is that exposure to tech seriously damages your ability to fall asleep each night. Here are just some of the ways that technology causes sleep problems.
1. Disrupted Circadian Rhythm
According to the Sleep Health Foundation, bright lights from tablets, mobile phones, and televisions causes reductions in the release of crucial sleep hormones like melatonin. After 1.5 hours of use in the evening, your devices will tell your body that it’s time to wake up instead of falling asleep. This means that you’ll be left wired and active when you want to be settling down to snooze.
Because your brain can’t release the melatonin required to help you fall asleep, your entire circadian rhythm gets thrown off track. You end up feeling more tired in the morning because your melatonin production comes later on in
the evening.
2. Increased Stimulation
When you start to unwind at the end of the day by drinking a cup of tea or having a hot bath, those routines tell your body and mind that it’s time to sleep. The key to a good night’s rest is making sure that the activities that you take part in before bed are relaxing, not stimulating.
Unfortunately, watching videos on your phone, or playing games on your tablet isn’t relaxing. It activates your brain and gets you to focus on things instead. Even interacting with some one social media is stimulating, which means that you can’t enter the typical “sleep mode” required for rest.
3. Activity Absorption
Another problem with engaging in activities with technology before sleep, is that you get caught up in what you’re doing. If you’re enjoying watching shows on Netflix or playing a game on your phone, you don’t want to stop doing it. This means that you start to convince yourself that it’s okay to watch one more episode or play one more game.
When this happens, you begin to diminish the number of hours of sleep that you can get. This leads to the problem of sleep deprivation, which leaves you feeling exhausted, and exposes you to a variety of dangerous side effects.
4. Sleep Disturbances
Even if you manage to put your phone down, and you can mitigate the effects of blue light, you’re still unlikely to get a good night’s sleep if your technology is in your bedroom with you. It’s a well-known fact that noises in your bedroom will make it harder for you to sleep soundly. Even the gentle sound of your phone buzzing to give you another alert could be enough to wake you up.
If you wake up in the middle of the night, then you might struggle to get back to sleep again. This means that once again, you’re at risk of suffering from problems caused by sleep deprivation. Some people get so into the habit of hearing sounds from their phone that they even imagine them when they aren’t there.
5. Wi-Fi Signal Issues
Finally, a study conducted in 2007 gave subjects real and fake mobile phones to interact with before they went to sleep. The people playing with the real Wi-Fi enabled phones had more trouble sleeping. The researchers were able to demonstrate that different frequencies from your phone can actually harm your sleeping.
Having different kinds of electromagnetic frequencies in your bedroom when you’re trying to sleep could be the cause of various chronic sleep disorders. No matter how much you love your tech, it just makes sense to turn it off before bed.
