New Study Suggests Our Phone’s ‘Night Mode’ Might Not Be Good For Sleep

In recent years, studies have found that the blue light emitted by the screens of our devices are not conducive to sleep. The studies claim that this disrupts our sleeping patterns which means that even when we sleep, it will not be a restful one. This is why many companies, such as Apple, have introduced features that adjusts the temperature of our displays to counter this problem.

Unfortunately, it seems that these warmer displays might not be as effective as you might think. This is according to a study by researchers at the University of Manchester where it suggests that the yellow tint on our smartphone’s displays that is the result of increasing its color temperature might just be as bad, if not worse.

Lead researcher Dr. Tim Brown says that the whole issue with blue light stemmed from a discovery from 20 years ago that melanopsin, a protein found in the eye, is key in regulating the body clock. Because the protein was found to be better at detecting short-wavelength photons, it is thought that blue light would have a greater effect compared to other colors.

However, the new study, which was conducted on mice, suggests that yellow light is just as bad. In fact, blue light might actually be better because when it is dimmed down, blue light is more relaxing than yellow. That being said, as we mentioned, this study was only conducted on mice so we have no idea if their findings are equally true on humans, although Brown does seem to believe that it is just as applicable.

Image credit – Japanexperterna.se/Flickr

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones, General
Tags: Health, study