It is almost everybody’s nighttime routine; put on your pj’s, brush your teeth, skincare, crawl into bed, and then. Then, finally, you reach out for your smartphone.
We have all done this before, and I bet you are doing it right now, lying in bed, scrolling through your phone, and reading this article. Although we would rather you be asleep right now, getting all the rest you need, we still advise you to keep on reading this article because it might help prevent this from happening again.
It Is almost the norm for everybody, adults and children alike. It’s just impossible to put the phone down sometimes. But it is necessary that you only take your phone to bed sometimes.
Cell phones have made the world much more accessible and forever changed us as humans. We can’t deny how helpful these Devices have been to us since their creation. But we also can’t deny that they have very adverse side effects that we should look out for and try to avoid as much as possible.
In this age and day, the world is full of new information, research, ideas, and other developments that sometimes can make your brain feel a little overworked, and sleeping is how we put our brains to rest. So when that time of the day comes, you should put the phone away and give your brain the rest it needs to keep you going the next day.
Many studies have shown that taking your cell phone to bed has many adverse health effects on your body. These effects will be broken down individually and in the following blog
-Blue Light Emissions
Our cell phones emit blue light, which is incredibly harmful to the eyes when constantly exposed. During the day, when you are sitting in a bright room or using your phone outside, these blue lights will blend with the rest of the lights in your room or your surroundings and feather out. But during the night, when you lay in a dark room, these blue lights will only affect your eyes even worse. Our eyes are susceptible to all kinds of light, but they are accessible to blue rays emitted by screens such as those laptops, cell phones, and iPads. These blue lights will also mess with your melatonin production, the hormone responsible for your sleep and wake cycle, also known as your circadian rhythm.
Messing up your circadian rhythm will disrupt your sleep and make it increasingly complex for You to sleep at night and get the rest your body needs.
Overexposure to blue lights can cause lousy eyesight in the long run. But unfortunately, many people use their phones or laptops at night and don’t realize how harmful and disruptive they are to their bodies.
Some people have no choice but to use their phones at night because of their work environment. This blog post is not directed at them, but we advise that they use a blue light pair of glasses such as the blue box blue light glasses.
Box blue light glasses.
Increased Nighttime Alertness
Imagine you decided to stay up for five more minutes scrolling through your phone, and then you get a strongly worded e-mail from your boss or someone else, or you even just come across an upsetting social media post that gets you all fired up. This will cause you to either lose sleep or not be able to relax enough to go to sleep. Even if you don’t come across an upsetting post or e-mail, continuously scrolling through your phone in the dark can trick your brain into thinking that it needs to stay awake and perform whatever task you are doing. This is terrible for your brain because it will throw off your circadian rhythm, which can sometimes cause your whole body to feel upside down.
Feeling tired and Sleepy during the day.
We’ve all done this, we say I’ll be on my phone for five more minutes, and then I’ll put it away and go to sleep, but then those five minutes turned into 10 minutes, then 15 minutes, then an hour, then two hours and then you look at the clock, and it says it’s time for work. So you end up going to work exhausted and unable to function correctly, understand your tasks, and perform them, and you might even feel so sleepy that you can’t keep your eyes open. This can cause you to be unable to do your work correctly and might even get you in trouble with your boss or teacher. So it is essential to get enough sleep at night when it’s time to sleep if you want to be able to function the next day.
Reduction of the amount of REM sleep you get
It is better to put your phone on silent before going to bed. Because sometimes, even though you might not be on your phone, the constant notifications from texts or calls might disrupt your deep sleep or not even allow you to get into REM sleep in the first place. REM sleep is the most profound form of sleep you can get. It stands for rapid eye movement, which happens when your body is completely resting and is not alert to anything happening around it. If you are not in REM sleep, your body might try to wake you up, and you keep getting notifications. If you do wake up and grab your phone, you might not be able to put it back down, and you might not be able to go back to sleep. This will undoubtedly mean that you will be exhausted the following day.
How to prevent yourself from reaching out for your phone
It is usually relatively easy for people with self-control to put their phones away before bed, but here are a few tips for those who don’t have that kind of self-control.
Put your phone charge in the other room.
Plugging your phone into a charger in the other room will make it harder for you to reach out for it in the middle of the night or before you fall asleep. If your phone is away, you are more likely to fall asleep than to get up and grab it.
But, if you have no self-control whatsoever, we would encourage you even to plug your phone to charge in your basement, especially if Your basement is dark or spooky. This will surely discourage you from grabbing your phone because you’ll find it easier to fall asleep without your phone than to walk down the stairs and into your basement at night alone to grab it.
If you constantly get emergency calls, we suggest you set your phone up so that it will only ring when you receive calls from certain people. This way, you can put your phone away from your bed even if it’s in the same room and still not reach out for it and not get constant notifications that will disrupt your REM sleep.
We advise you to ditch your electronics for at least 20 to 30 minutes before bed. During that time, you can do your nighttime routine, change into your PJs and jump into bed. Finally, if you need to look at something before bed, we suggest you grab a book you don’t particularly enjoy and try to read a snippet every night. You’d be surprised how quickly you will fall asleep, especially if that book is boring.
Getting a good night’s sleep is how your body and mind recharge to start and continue a new day. Depriving yourself of a good night’s sleep will affect you negatively. Always remember that there is tomorrow, and be on your phone the next day, and you can still play with your phone; that bed is for sleeping, and the night is your brain’s lunch break, and it deserves it. So, avoid taking your phone to bed to get a good night’s rest.
