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.
Just bekause you believe it doesn't mean you have to obey it
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
Science has citations, not tweets.
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.
If you ever hear that "science" says something, go digging for the source and make sure "science" is actually saying it and not just 1 dubious study that the internet has latched onto and continuously parrots while ignoring contradicting evidence.
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.
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 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.
Books can definitely be expensive but they're one item on an ever shortening list of things that corpos can't claw back from you after purchase. For that reason, they're money well spent if you ask me!
I stopped doing a screen detox because Im depressed.
How are you supposed to stop being sleepy in the morning without pulling out your phone.
It's nice to know what time it is too
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