Is blue light from your smartphone, tablet, laptop, and other electronic devices keeping you from sleeping at night? No, it’s not. We checked. We’re science, and we looked into it. You’re worried about the blue light, but you don’t have to be. You’ll sleep when it’s time for sleeping, and the blue light can’t stop you, or screens.
It’s fine, what’s inside of you. The blue light from the screens doesn’t suppress anything. You’ve got all the right hormones coursing inside of you. You don’t have to check to make sure we’re telling the truth, because it’s fine.
The studies we did, they show it’s fine. You slept normal. We looked, and it was normal. Did a study on you, on everybody, and it’s all sleeping fine. Want to know what happened in the study? Good things. Sleep things. Night things. The light from your phone isn’t bothering you, and you can leave it on all you want. More than all you want, or just all you want, either is fine, as long as it’s more. The light is fine, so why mind it? Nothing’s keeping you up. You always slept like this. You’re sleeping now. Science says don’t worry, so don’t. Your body knows when to sleep, and the blue light isn’t going anywhere.
Someone was real concerned about how the blue screens made them sleep, or didn’t. Not us. Someone. Well, we found out it’s fine. The problem was something else. The problem wasn’t a problem. Different whole thing. You have your morning screen, then your work screen, then your commute screen, then your table screen, then your bed screen, and there’s nothing you can do about it, and why should you? Because the light, the blue light, it’s fine. You don’t have to do anything two hours before bed. You can look at whatever you want. Don’t worry about what you’re looking at, what’s looking at you.
You’ll sleep soon, and that’s fine.
I understand the idea of cleaning up tagging procedures for the site, I really do, but I’m gonna miss the tag “things mallory does for no reason” tag linking to a central location.
Though I guess when you click on the google search, the archive of the old posts tagged with that is the first result, so that’s something…
We are fixing that! That is a REAL TAG! Thanks for the heads up.
Hooray! I look forward to its revival!
Dammit, the open thread on Friday inspired me to buy some, and now I’m wearing them, and you tell me it’s all fine! Should I take them off now? Will things stop being just fine if I keep them on?
GUIDE ME.
…. you…. bought some…. blue lights?
I’m lost. Perhaps I should just follow the blue light?
My manager’s SAD light is blue. I think so it’s like you’re outside under a blue sky?
It’s probably because the neurons in your retinas that tell your brain that it’s daytime react most strongly to blue light.
AT LEAST, THAT IS WHAT SCIENTISTS USED TO THINK. BEFORE THEY REALIZED THAT THE BLUE LIGHT IS FINE.
No, I bought blue light blocker glasses BEFORE MALLORY SAID BLUE LIGHT WAS FINE.
(I know this post is totally humorous but in case you’re worried the blue/white light DOES keep you up, as I know it used to do for me, you should try f.lux for your computer. it adjusts the computer screen light to the setting sun, so it stays more orangey-red at night and doesn’t bother your eyes/keep you awake. Also good for migraine-havers.)
I mean. Ahem, yes. The blue light, it is fine. It is good.
(I have these orange safety goggles that go over my regular glasses, on recommendation from my therapist after I told her that no amount of focusing on my breath and taking melatonin was letting me sleep at night.)
I’m so glad I can trust science to tell me what is normal and good like blue light so I don’t have to do any further research or worrying or otherwise bothering my pretty little head.
I, too, love my f.lux dearly. I do not miss the blue light, although the blue light misses me. I hear its small sobs in the night.
I need that on my phone, but I need to set it to be the reverse, because I work nights!!
In case anyone is interested, a good alternative to f.lux for your phone is twilight (for android). https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com…
Thank you!!!!!!!!
f.lux is amazing!
Another option (besides Twilight) for Android devices is Bluelight Filter, which you can just toggle on or off, depending on the time of day.
I wish there was something for iOS that didn’t require jailbreaking one’s device to download.
There is apparently a “sideloading” option for f.lux for iPhone: https://justgetflux.com/sideload/ . I’m intrigued.
Sadly, no option to install Xcode 7 on Windows machines.
DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!
I used to use Flux, and I really liked the way it synchronized with sunset (and sunrise! ah, grad school). But now I use a program called Nocturne, because it lets you control the spectrum settings, and my tired eyes seem to prefer a pinker light in the evening over Flux’s orangey-brown.
F.lux also has a dark room mode for those of us lucky enough to work in rooms that cannot have any blue lights on! It’s so much fun! Red lights for life, down with blue!!!!!!
(Grad school and behavior experiments are great guys. My body is not at all thrown off by spending multiple hours in the dark during the middle of daylight.)
f.lux doesn’t block blue light coming from your screens unless you use the darkroom setting, which makes everything red and black and which is harder to read. I do wish they’d stop implying that. It does reduce the amount of blue light, and it does a lovely job of reducing glare. You still get plenty of blue light coming through, so if you’re someone who finds that blue light buggers up your melatonin production, that’ll still be happening. Get yourself a pair of orange-tinted blue-blocking specs, that solves the problem. If you need prescription specs, try it out first by getting a few orange light bulbs and either an orange screen filter (lighting gel companies do them) or avoiding screens for a few hours before bedtime. I did that at first, and the effect was really obvious, so I splashed out on the specs and haven’t looked back. I’m fine using computers before bed as long as I have the orange specs on.
In my experience, it’s really, really obvious if you need this, and it’s really, really obvious if it’s working. Here’s what happened for me.
Usual exposure to blue light from screens, crap exposure to natural daylight, and being a natural night owl = running on a 25 hour day (Non-24 Sleep-Wake Disorder).
Putting on orange tinted glasses at 9.30 but otherwise continuing as before = 24 hour day with a normal bedtime.
There was actually an intermediary stage, where I used a bright lightbox (also blue, the GoLite) in the morning to tell my brain “this is morning”, and that got me onto a 24 hour day but I was falling asleep at 4 am. Once I found darkness therapy (the orange specs, it creates a “virtual darkness”) I found that I didn’t need the lightbox. Then I went off and wrote a website about it, because I was pretty pissed off that I’d had years of horrible sleep disorders and a total lack of help from the sleep clinic, and this info is actually out there.
Fun fact: darkness therapy was first discovered by putting patients with bipolar disorder in total darkness for 14 hours out of the 24. It stopped the bipolar dead in its tracks and normalised their sleep. It was also the sort of protocol which pretty much no one is going to keep up with, so they did more research and discovered that you only need to filter out the blue light, producing virtual darkness.
Another fun fact: it can be a bloody nuisance getting your optician to make up orange tinted prescription specs (admittedly my usually-wonderful optometrist messed up EVERYTHING this time, I had scratched lenses, glasses where the arm suddenly fell off, the lot), but they should be able to do it.
Peculiar fact: when I mention the orange specs and say “they help me sleep”, a surprising number of people ask if I wear them when I’m asleep. Er, no, that’ll be the three hours before bedtime…
There’s been oodles of research on all of this. Did you know that night shift work triples the risk of breast cancer? And they reckon that nighttime exposure to blue light while feeding a baby is one of the factors in postnatal depression. There also seems to be a correlation between spending time in hospital, under constant bright lights, as a newborn, and developing circadian rhythm disorders in later life. I was premature, so I was put in an incubator where they shone blue light at me to treat jaundice. That must have really helped. Melatonin is serious stuff to be messing around with.
Darkness therapy doesn’t work for everyone, at least judging by the Nite-Owl list for people with Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (that’s the one where you tend to fall asleep really late, like 4am) and Non-24 Sleep-Wake Disorder (where you’re not on a 24 hour day). I reckon it worked for me because I’m mostly housebound due to having severe ME/CFS, so I wasn’t getting anything like normal amounts of daylight and didn’t even have regular mealtimes back then (well, you try doing that on a 25 hour day!), so once we sorted out the light signals and the mealtimes, it snapped into place. For some people, it seems to be really deep-seated and nothing will budge it. Mind you, I think the folks who stay on the Nite-Owl list are the rare ones, the most severely affected. If you look at reviews of orange tinted sunglasses on Amazon, there are loads of people successfully using them for sleep.
I fall asleep with my laptop on every night and I sleep fine. (In fact I sleep better because its on. Yes its a crutch, no I will not be parting with it.)
All those advice articles that say you have to turn off your screens two hours before bed? screw you. What am I supposed to do with those two hours? Those are my prime Netflix watching hours. I’m sure the authors sit around discussing philosophy with their perfect partners or reading original 18th century texts during those hours, but I am going to watch New Girl and y’all can fuck off.
/rant. (Sleep is a *thing* for me.)
How do you watch ASMR videos without a screen? You don’t.
How do I fall asleep without ASMR videos? I don’t.
I’m not sorrrrrrrry.
“I’m sure the authors sit around discussing philosophy with their perfect partners or reading original 18th century texts during those hours, but I am going to watch New Girl and y’all can fuck off.”
MARRY ME, YOU BEAUTIFUL CREATURE. and we will lounge around the apartment watching Netflix at Inappropriate Times, awash in the glow of blue light.
You make such a compelling case. I’ll start planning the wedding ASAP.
mmkay, wonderful. And I await the flood of thinkpieces about how Netflix & Chill leads to serious relationships with bated breath. Bated, let me tell you.
TBH I wish all relationships could go immediately to the Netflix & Chill in PJs all weekend stage. Its the best bit.
Er, crutches are necessary medical devices, not bad things, you know? Personally I have a nice range of fabulously patterned walking sticks instead.
Out of curiosity, is it the noise from the laptop that helps you sleep?
As for turning off all screens before bed, yep, with you on that one. If they’re keeping you up, put on a pair of orange specs to block the blue light. If they’re not keeping you up, who cares? I’ve got massive sleep disorders so I need the orange specs, and my partner who doesn’t do anything of the sort still sleeps better than me, the lucky sod. But at least we’re now sleeping at the same hours.
The original research where they were using darkness to treat bipolar disorder used full darkness, not virtual darkness (i.e. with blue light filtered out), and they did it for fourteen hours out of the 24. *shudder* It worked, but they concluded that no one would actually do that in real life. This was in the days before smartphones.
I watch videos (usually comedy, mostly QI) to trick myself into falling asleep without my brain doing that thing where I fall down a hole of thoughts and it wont shut up (seriously, I’ve been awake all night because of it before).
I also tend to wake up a lot at night and I fall asleep again quicker with something on in the background.
I go through phases of sleeping well and sleeping badly (currently sleeping great and life is so much better! It’ll probably change again in a week), but my main issue is around actually falling asleep, I need a bit of distraction to make it happen easily.
Personally I don’t have a light problem (I can sleep in a brightly lit room), somit always annoys me when I talk about my sleep problems and people instantly jump on the light thing.
I’m very much you do you when it comes to fixing sleep things!
I’m hearing this in Cecil Palmer’s voice.
Speaking of which, Mallory’s WtNV episode must have come out by now, right? If so, anyone know which one it was?
She wrote a WtNV ep? They even accept guest writers any more/again?
She mentioned it all casual-like in the comments to a Toast post a million years ago, and then several months later Mara Wilson tweeted about it, and I haven’t heard anything since.
TELL US MORE!!!!!
OH, okay, I found the tweet: https://twitter.com/MaraWritesStuff/status/578366… So I guess it was a live thing??
which of the live shows was it? some of them I loved and some I wasn’t so hot on, I certainly hope it was one of the former or I’d feel disloyal
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WHAT
“what’s looking at you”
Oooo. Very good, Mallory. Creepiness insertion just at the end. ::shiver::
“Nothing’s keeping you up. You always slept like this. You’re sleeping now. ” Oh good. I was worried.
COME IN UNDER THE SHADOW OF THIS BLUE LIGHT
I WILL SHOW YOU SLEEP IN A HANDFUL OF SCIENCE
No, I’m pretty sure that obsessively making sure that everything in my room that emits even the tiniest bit of light is covered in electrical tape is a great way to unwind each evening.
WHY do they make electronics glow? like why. I can tell my air filter’s on by the fact that it’s roaring. I can tell my router’s on by the fact my phone can do anything. I can tell my computer’s on by the fact that I’m using my computer. seriously, the whole inside of the thing glows and it has a transparent plastic side. I should tape it over…but then there are all these HOLES and things and it won’t do any good aaaghhh glowing indicators on electronics are the worst
A previous computer had these, like, glowing racing stripes on either side of the monitor that were always blinking and shit until I figured out how to turn them off. You are a computer, not a slot machine!
UGH I had one that did that too! Stripes around the monitor and a big stripe above the touchpad that was so bright I could see my fingertips glowing. Honestly all it needs is a tiny light on the outside that turns on when it’s charging and maybe one that blinks when it’s asleep but not shut down. Maybe.
Seriously. I initially put my new desktop in my bedroom. This seemed fine and dandy until I realized exactly how much the power button glows. You could practically read by it, even though I can’t think of any possible reason why I might need a light that bright around my computer’s power button. It’s a huge button, I’m not likely to miss it. The first night, I covered the button with a couple of post-its and it seemed fine at first. It was less fine after the computer went to sleep and the light started flashing like a tiny lighthouse in my bedroom.
The computer found a new home ASAP. Glowing indicators on electronics are super the worst.
AGREED. I have about 3 or 4 power cords for various electronics with glowy parts, and they get strenuously kicked under the bed every morning and evening.
I was at home recently catsitting for my parents, and discovered they’d moved their Mac desktop into my bedroom because of upcoming building work. It had been left on, and I discovered when trying to sleep that it would periodically whirr loudly and illuminate its screen. So disconcerting! DON’T COME TO LIFE, COMPUTER, NOBODY IS USING YOU.
There are many lovely things about having the financial privilege of living alone: there are no electronics at all in my bedroom, and that is one of them.
How…comforting. Yes, I feel very comforted. This is what comfort feels like, and I am feeling it.
Don’t worry about what you’re looking at, what’s looking at you.
You’ll sleep soon, and that’s fine.
….Aaand now I’ll never sleep again.
Scientific Studies Made Horrific
THERE ARE FOUR [blue] LIGHTS!
All this is missing a very important point: if this light is so daylighty, why doesn’t it hurt vampires? Which it doesn’t, since Angel was able to look at the Angel Investigations website without any flamey side effects.
Me whose insomnia was untouched by most meds or routines last fall really needed this comforting article. New anxiety meds helped immensely (thank goodness).
But what about the effects of the blue light on our teens? Will it keep the teens awake? Will they devote further hours each night to their texting and chatting and what have you and lose all ability to interact with non-blue-light bearing organisms?
OK I still legit don’t understand why ppl don’t just turn their computer off at night anyway but OK.
And now, the weather.
Mallory science is the second best science, after Aperture Science.
TBH I wish all relationships could go immediately to the Netflix & Chill in PJs all weekend stage. Its the best bit.
There is apparently a "sideloading" option for f.lux for iPhone: https://justgetflux.com/sideload/ . I'm intrigued.
Blue light is fine, blue light is copacetic. Apple Watch told me so. It’s those Pebble bastards that we have to be vigilant about.
Blue light is fine, blue light is copacetic. Apple Watch told me so. It's those Pebble bastards that we have to be vigilant about.
Sadly, no option to install Xcode 7 on Windows machines.
DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!
I love the Kindle PaperWhite ad I’m getting at the bottom of this.
f.lux doesn't block blue light coming from your screens unless you use the darkroom setting, which makes everything red and black and which is harder to read. I do wish they'd stop implying that. It does reduce the amount of blue light, and it does a lovely job of reducing glare. You still get plenty of blue light coming through, so if you're someone who finds that blue light buggers up your melatonin production, that'll still be happening. Get yourself a pair of orange-tinted blue-blocking specs, that solves the problem. If you need prescription specs, try it out first by getting a few orange light bulbs and either an orange screen filter (lighting gel companies do them) or avoiding screens for a few hours before bedtime. I did that at first, and the effect was really obvious, so I splashed out on the specs and haven't looked back. I'm fine using computers before bed as long as I have the orange specs on.
In my experience, it's really, really obvious if you need this, and it's really, really obvious if it's working. Here's what happened for me.
Usual exposure to blue light from screens, crap exposure to natural daylight, and being a natural night owl = running on a 25 hour day (Non-24 Sleep-Wake Disorder).
Putting on orange tinted glasses at 9.30 but otherwise continuing as before = 24 hour day with a normal bedtime.
There was actually an intermediary stage, where I used a bright lightbox (also blue, the GoLite) in the morning to tell my brain "this is morning", and that got me onto a 24 hour day but I was falling asleep at 4 am. Once I found darkness therapy (the orange specs, it creates a "virtual darkness") I found that I didn't need the lightbox. Then I went off and wrote a website about it, because I was pretty pissed off that I'd had years of horrible sleep disorders and a total lack of help from the sleep clinic, and this info is actually out there.
Fun fact: darkness therapy was first discovered by putting patients with bipolar disorder in total darkness for 14 hours out of the 24. It stopped the bipolar dead in its tracks and normalised their sleep. It was also the sort of protocol which pretty much no one is going to keep up with, so they did more research and discovered that you only need to filter out the blue light, producing virtual darkness.
Another fun fact: it can be a bloody nuisance getting your optician to make up orange tinted prescription specs (admittedly my usually-wonderful optometrist messed up EVERYTHING this time, I had scratched lenses, glasses where the arm suddenly fell off, the lot), but they should be able to do it.
Peculiar fact: when I mention the orange specs and say "they help me sleep", a surprising number of people ask if I wear them when I'm asleep. Er, no, that'll be the three hours before bedtime…
There's been oodles of research on all of this. Did you know that night shift work triples the risk of breast cancer? And they reckon that nighttime exposure to blue light while feeding a baby is one of the factors in postnatal depression. There also seems to be a correlation between spending time in hospital, under constant bright lights, as a newborn, and developing circadian rhythm disorders in later life. I was premature, so I was put in an incubator where they shone blue light at me to treat jaundice. That must have really helped. Melatonin is serious stuff to be messing around with.
Darkness therapy doesn't work for everyone, at least judging by the Nite-Owl list for people with Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (that's the one where you tend to fall asleep really late, like 4am) and Non-24 Sleep-Wake Disorder (where you're not on a 24 hour day). I reckon it worked for me because I'm mostly housebound due to having severe ME/CFS, so I wasn't getting anything like normal amounts of daylight and didn't even have regular mealtimes back then (well, you try doing that on a 25 hour day!), so once we sorted out the light signals and the mealtimes, it snapped into place. For some people, it seems to be really deep-seated and nothing will budge it. Mind you, I think the folks who stay on the Nite-Owl list are the rare ones, the most severely affected. If you look at reviews of orange tinted sunglasses on Amazon, there are loads of people successfully using them for sleep.
Er, crutches are necessary medical devices, not bad things, you know? Personally I have a nice range of fabulously patterned walking sticks instead.
Out of curiosity, is it the noise from the laptop that helps you sleep?
As for turning off all screens before bed, yep, with you on that one. If they're keeping you up, put on a pair of orange specs to block the blue light. If they're not keeping you up, who cares? I've got massive sleep disorders so I need the orange specs, and my partner who doesn't do anything of the sort still sleeps better than me, the lucky sod. But at least we're now sleeping at the same hours.
The original research where they were using darkness to treat bipolar disorder used full darkness, not virtual darkness (i.e. with blue light filtered out), and they did it for fourteen hours out of the 24. *shudder* It worked, but they concluded that no one would actually do that in real life. This was in the days before smartphones.
I watch videos (usually comedy, mostly QI) to trick myself into falling asleep without my brain doing that thing where I fall down a hole of thoughts and it wont shut up (seriously, I've been awake all night because of it before).
I also tend to wake up a lot at night and I fall asleep again quicker with something on in the background.
I go through phases of sleeping well and sleeping badly (currently sleeping great and life is so much better! It'll probably change again in a week), but my main issue is around actually falling asleep, I need a bit of distraction to make it happen easily.
Personally I don't have a light problem (I can sleep in a brightly lit room), somit always annoys me when I talk about my sleep problems and people instantly jump on the light thing.
I'm very much you do you when it comes to fixing sleep things!