Put the Phone Away! Your Smartphone is Ruining Your Sleep

By Carrie Tsai,  Last Updated: September 17, 2019

You have followed the sleep recipes in your diet and work out a lot, why do you still have to wait for a long time to be sleepy? Have you ever thought about the mobile phone and tablet are to blame?

Sleep Disorder Caused by Electronics

Mobile phones have become an indispensable electronic device in our daily life, but it will bring us convenience as well as impact on our body. Most people can not do without the phone even when going to toilet.

And the time will easily pass by with a phone in hand, thus there will be dependence on the mobile phone especially when to go to sleep. However, some people have insomnia and stay up all night while watching the phone. What impact will it have on our body if we keep playing phone before going to sleep?

Slower response

If you play mobile phone for too long before going to sleep, not only the sleep quality will be reduced to a large extent, but it will also keep you in a state of lack of sleep, resulting in a decline in the body’s resistance and immunity. The slowing of the brain’s ability to respond is also bad for the brain cells.

Hard to fall asleep

Watching mobile phone before going to bed will transfer your brain to a state of activeness from the state of rest because of the stimulation from the phone. Meanwhile, the brain will send an active signal and it will take a long time to completely suppress the signal and that is why some people become owls.

Upset daily schedule

You will be addicted to the phone when using it too often late in the night and time files so fast that you hardly notice it. Whether in the morning or during the day, there is always an impulse to reach for the phone, which affect our physical health by breaking the biological clock and normal working hours.

Upset daily schedule

You will be addicted to the phone when using it too often late in the night and time files so fast that you hardly notice it. Whether in the morning or during the day, there is always an impulse to reach for the phone, which affect our physical health by breaking the biological clock and normal working hours.

Reasons Behind the Sleep Disorder

There have been scientific explanations regarding the way our phone affecting the sleep quality. About 90% people sleep while playing mobile phones at night and the light from the electronic devices will cause sleep delays, making it difficult to fall asleep.

Our sleep and waking state from morning to night is regulated by the circadian rule, the so-called biological clock, which tell us when to eat and when to sleep.

However, the various signals given by nature and the internal factor in human body, say, the external environment, emotions, physical strength and attention, among which the light is the major factor affecting our body clock.

At the moment your brain receive the light source, the entire “logistics” begins: your eyes detect the light and send the information to the small nuclei (the cross-core-the nerve group that controls the circadian rules in the brain) and detects the light.

Then, it will let the pineal gland not secrete the melatonin and tell you: Sleep for what? Wake up and get high!

Studies have also shown that short-wave blue light emitted by computers is the most irritating to the human retina. Exposure to this light for a few hours before going too bed will suppress the melatonin secretion, making it very hard to fall asleep. So blue don’t look good on you.

And here is the problem: Do I need to turn off the phone before sleeping?

Although many people do not have this habit, after hearing the impact mentioned above, they may feel that they should power off it. Then why is it “should”? Mobile phones have radiation, which is harmful to health? Or saving power? No, that is not the point. It is time for you to know the truth.

Firstly, you should know what the mobile phone radiation is.

When using a mobile phone, it will transmit radio waves to the transmitting base station, and those waves are somewhat absorbed by human body. The studies have found, however, that the radiation of mobile phones is within the safe range and will not cause direct harm to the body.

There is no way that the radiation can lead to headaches or cancer. The radiation is just a name for energy, it is not the nuclear radiation, so there is no need to panic.

Secondly, those who think turning off the phone will save power are wrong. To be honest, its power consumption may be larger than standby for all night and it is better to turn on the airplane mode.

In fact, the power consumption of mobile phones is determined by the hardware such as CPU, screens and GPS. When the phone is in the state of standby, the CPU will sleep automatically. In the airplane mode, the communication module will also be turned off, so the power consumption will be greatly decreased.

So the correct way is to power off once a week.

The phone will become more and more laggy when being used for a long time because the background programs will create trash gradually. When restarting, your phone will automatically clear the cached data, close background programs.

So if you want your phone to operate smoothly, regular restart will help.

In order to have a nice sleep, rather than turn off your phone, you should not watch any electronics for 2 hours before going to bed.

The lighting of the bedroom should be a warm color, such as mild yellow light or night light, both of which will send a signal to the pineal gland: it is time to sleep.

In sum, We should spare no effort to deal with works during the day without ignoring the importance of a night’s sleep. May you have a sound sleep tonight!