Why Your Phone Is Wrecking Your Sleep

This is one of the hardest sleep habits for most people to change.

Many of us finish our nights:

• Watching TV or a movie.

• Scrolling Instagram or TikTok

• Doing homework or work on a laptop.

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Technology is deeply ingrained into our daily lives.

Unfortunately, it’s also one of the biggest destroyers of sleep.

How Technology Disrupts Sleep

In a previous article, we talked about sleep regularity and your body’s internal clock (your circadian rhythm).

This clock helps tell your brain:

• “It’s time to be awake.”

• “It’s time to go to sleep.”

Technology can completely disrupt that rhythm.

Most screens emit blue light, which is very stimulating to the brain. Just like morning sunlight tells your brain it’s time to wake up, blue light at 

night tells your brain it’s still daytime.

Imagine it’s 10pm.
You’re getting ready for bed.
You scroll Instagram for 15 minutes.

Your brain just got the message: “Stay awake.”

Not ideal for getting great sleep.

What To Do About Blue Light

Sometimes being on devices at night is unavoidable. Here’s a few tips for those times:

• Wear blue-light blocking glasses
  They’re inexpensive and help reduce blue-light from screens. I usually start wearing mine around 8:30pm.

• Use Night Shift or Night Mode
  Most devices can automatically reduce blue light in the evening. On iPhones, you can find this under Settings → Display & Brightness → Night Shift

• You can then set a time (like 8pm to 7am) that it automatically shifts to this setting.

Why Night-Shift Mode and Blue-Light Glasses Aren’t Enough

You might be thinking, “Perfect! I can turn on these settings, wear my glasses, and now scroll and watch TV as much as I want!”

Bad news. Our devices wreck our sleep through more than just blue-light.

The bigger problem is that our devices are attention-capturing machines.

Entire teams of people are paid millions to make sure you keep scrolling, keep watching, and keep coming back for more.

This stimulation causes mental arousal, stress, and anxiety. Exactly what you don’t want before bed.

Every time you grab your phone, even briefly, you’re basically pressing the pause button on sleep.

So What Should I Do?

Start with a short digital detox before bed.

Begin with 30 minutes.

Thirty minutes before bedtime:

• Put all devices away.

• Not “away, then one last check.”

• Fully away for the night!

Once you can do that consistently for a week, try 35-40 minutes.

Gradually build up to a full hour. That’s the ultimate goal!

One Life-Changing Habit

If you can, don’t sleep with your phone in your bedroom.

This sounds extreme, but it’s incredibly impactful.

If you use your phone as an alarm, spend a few dollars on a cheap digital alarm clock.

And most of us don’t need to respond to messages during the middle of the night.

If you absolutely have to have your phone in your room, here’s a great rule I heard from sleep researcher Matthew Walker:

“If you’re using your phone in the bedroom, you have to use it standing up.”

You’re much less likely to doom scroll when you’re not lying in bed.

I also recommend using Airplane Mode to prevent notifications and signals from your phone.

Digital Detox Checklist

• Put devices away 30 minutes before bed.

• Add 5-10 more minutes each week till you get to 1 hour.

• Put your phone in a different room when you sleep.

• If you can’t, use Airplane Mode and only use it while standing.

This habit is challenging, but incredibly impactful.

Start with a realistic time window, build gradually, and stick to it.

Your brain, your body, and your sleep will thank you!