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You love your smartphone but it may be ruining your ZZZ’s. Use of these devices, especially near bedtime, is associated with worse quality of sleep, according to a new study published in a journal PLOS One.
It may be hard for you to stop looking and constantly using your smartphone at night, though it is a very terrible idea. Smartphone screens emit shorter wavelength blue light which causes damaging health effects. Exposure to this wavelength of light disrupts the normal sleep cycle. This may contribute to heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and other health conditions.
This blue light can be seen even at the sunniest times of the day. But at night, your brain gets confused by that light, as it mimics the brightness of the sun. This causes the brain to stop producing melanin, a hormone that regulates “sleep cycle”. making it harder to fall and stay asleep and potentially causing serious health problems along the way.
Dr. Gregory Marcus, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco said:
“When we looked at smartphone use around the time when participants reported they went to bed, more smartphone use around that time, in particular, was associated with a longer time to fall asleep and worse sleep quality during the night.”
Though most of these negative effects have been studied exclusively in adults, children’s sleep is also affected by technology. According to an unrelated study, Lead author Ben Carter, a senior lecturer in biostatistics at King’s College London, and his colleagues discovered that “for teens and children, the use of cell phones, tablets and computers is associated with losing sleep time and sleep quality.”
Now for people who have been using the smartphones of 2018, I might have the best news for you. “Blue Light Filter”, or “Eye comfort” on Android and Apple smartphones respectively, stops the blue light that emits from your smartphone and makes the screen yellowish. It will save you from all the diseases I mentioned in the article earlier.
Do you use your smartphone excessively during the night? Let us know in a comment section below.
