Don’t Go Towards the Blue Light

Investigating the dark side of social media and how it’s affecting sleep.

Okay I'll go to bed... after seeing what this instagram ad is.  
Okay I'll go to bed... right after this episode. 
Okay I'll go to bed... wait I can save how much on that?

We get all snuggled up in bed, the room is dark, and we got in bed in just enough time to get those perfect 8 hours of sleep, right? Well how long did you spend laying in bed on your phone? It doesn’t matter when you get into bed if you spend hours scrolling through your phone after. That bright, harsh light that you must quickly turn down so your eyes don’t hurt, is a nice big sign saying you shouldn’t be on your phone right now. Yet, we ignore it because there is so much to see, watch, and read.

After an hour or two, our eyes start to get dry from the bright blue light, and finally we must actually put the phone down. However, now we have set ourselves up to have improper sleep for the rest of the night. The bright light has interrupted our sleep cycle and now, no matter what, we will have more disrupted sleep because that blue light tells your body it’s time to be awake not go to sleep. You can learn in my one of my previous blogs, “Yes, you should be sleeping more” about sleep disruptions and the effects of improper sleep.

The morning comes and you wake up feeling anything but refreshed, however, it never comes to mind that you didn’t get enough sleep because you got into bed early enough. Obviously, the three hours of scrolling on your phone didn’t count. So you go about your day thinking of reasons and making up excuses for your drowsy demeanor. Somehow every rationale doesn’t quite tell the whole story, and in the end you are just convincing yourself that you aren’t tired. Check out last weeks blog, “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” to see if you use the three most common excuses for missing out on sleep.

The next night comes and you are back in bed scrolling through your phone for hours but still counting it as sleep. That bright light shining in your face, but it doesn’t matter because you can never get enough. There is always something new to see; something you’re really interested in. How could you put your phone down when there is always more stuff to draw you in?

What if I told you that was all on purpose?

Jennifer Golbeck conducted a Ted Talk where she introduced an interesting theory about social media. She found that many social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram track your personal information and keep them in a log so they can “personalize” your experience. They look at anything from your likes and to the time you spend scrolling and when you stop. Goldbeck discussed specifically how profile publications were used to send out data to marketing teams and behavior analysts so they could study of our behavior. But they swear it’s for our “benefit”, and it’s making social media “better”.

That is just so creepy!

It’s like they know who you are and what you like without ever having to make any actual contact with you. No wonder you can’t put your phone down at night, every ad and thing you scroll past is perfectly tailored to you. It’s all thanks to these giants social media corporations that want to “improve our experience” by constantly invading our privacy.

Is it fair that any social media account can take all of our information without our knowledge or approval of it? Well… that is where the catch lies. When we sign up for all these social media accounts, we agree to those terms without ever even reading what we are agreeing to. In one swift click we willingly give up our personal information in exchange for some tailored ads.

And what does this all mean for our sleep health?

Because social media is constantly getting more and more personalized, it makes it harder and harder for us to put down our phones at the end of each day. The worst part is, these corporations know that, and they love it. They aren’t sitting around thinking about our sleep health when they are making all these changes, they only see how it can make them more popular and successful. So they steal our information, and our sleep? That’s right.

Not only are we supporting the invasion of our privacy, we continue it at the expense of our sleep health. Each night you lose several hours to Facebook or Instagram, and the cycle continues because there is always something new. They program these apps to draw us in and we have to force ourselves out every night. Maybe if you understand the effects of social media on our sleep health you will think twice about picking up your phone once you’re in bed.

Next time you pick up your phone in bed, just remember you’re not only negatively effecting your sleep, you’re feeding into the dark side of social media.

It’s easy to improve your sleep each night, with these 10 tips for getting a better night’s sleep.

Make sure to check out my social media accounts for the best updates and tips on improving your sleep health.

Twitter: @MidnightHealth
Facebook Page: Midnight Health and Wellbeing

Just make sure not to look us up when you’re in bed at night. Go to sleep instead!