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Phones need 'bed mode' to protect sleep

bbc.com

21–30 of 63 posts

Re: Phones need 'bed mode' to protect sleep

#21
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually a bed mode will make a substantial difference. Looking at phones or laptops or whatever screens at nighttime suppresses melatonin, which leads to people not feeling sleepy when they should, which makes them much more likely to continue looking at their screen than if they became as tired as normal. It’s certainly possible to stay up doing something without blue light (e.g. reading by candlelight or a dim inc…

In my experience, using a screen colour app just encourages me to use my phone more not less. Even with these apps a phone will still emit a large amount of blue light and having the light source so close to my face I still notice it disrupts my sleep. If you believe using your phone late at night is harmful to you at all then why continue to maintain a that behaviour? Wouldn't it be much more beneficial to your heal…

If you believe using your phone late at night is harmful to you at all then why continue to maintain a that behaviour?

Paraphrasing from one of your previous posts, "if you really have to question every action that might be harmful then you would never go outside, put anything in your mouth, go to the bathroom etc. Your question really only makes sense when considering activities that have a relatively high risk of harm in which case the answer has to come down to two things. Firstly how harmful is this activity? And secondly, how much harm am I willing to take?"

If a bed mode is enough to make the disruption to one's sleep negligible, why not use the phone late at night?

Re: Phones need 'bed mode' to protect sleep

#22
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually a bed mode will make a substantial difference. Looking at phones or laptops or whatever screens at nighttime suppresses melatonin, which leads to people not feeling sleepy when they should, which makes them much more likely to continue looking at their screen than if they became as tired as normal. It’s certainly possible to stay up doing something without blue light (e.g. reading by candlelight or a dim inc…

In my experience, using a screen colour app just encourages me to use my phone more not less. Even with these apps a phone will still emit a large amount of blue light and having the light source so close to my face I still notice it disrupts my sleep. If you believe using your phone late at night is harmful to you at all then why continue to maintain a that behaviour? Wouldn't it be much more beneficial to your heal…

Where does reading a book on an iPad fall in the spectrum?

Re: Phones need 'bed mode' to protect sleep

#24

While I do think my Mac is overly blue, I also think that f.lux is ridiculously yellow. I've turned down the yellowness considerably compared to the defaults, and still find myself turning it off in the evening, because suddenly everything becomes washy yellow.

If you allow your eyes to adapt, the yellowness really isn’t a big deal, unless you’re doing something color sensitive like making art. Just stop worrying about precisely what colors are on screen. Even if you’re casually looking at photographs, watching a television show, or playing a game, your eyes can compensate pretty well for a significant reduction in the amount of blue light, and you can have a perfectly acce…

Why would it not be good to look at pictures before bed?

Re: Phones need 'bed mode' to protect sleep

#26
post #23

Or people just need to put the phone down before going to sleep. Every non-infantile responsible adult is capable of that. How hard can it be ?

Super hard, and you know it. Plenty people's willpower is basically depleted by night time.

My own little lifehack here is that my phone stays downstairs, in the charger, when I go to bed. I use an old phone without wifi or SIM to act as a simple, programmable, non-annoying alarm clock. It means that by the time I'm down, I don't need to resist to urge to just check HN one more time.

Re: Phones need 'bed mode' to protect sleep

#27
post #25
post #23

Or people just need to put the phone down before going to sleep. Every non-infantile responsible adult is capable of that. How hard can it be ?

You did not read the article... It's not about putting down the phone, it's about the light it emits.

Maybe he did. The blue tones are no problem if you simply don't look at the damn thing all evening.

Re: Phones need 'bed mode' to protect sleep

#28
post #23

Or people just need to put the phone down before going to sleep. Every non-infantile responsible adult is capable of that. How hard can it be ?

As other said it is not necessarily about the using the phone it's about the light emitted from screens of all our devices. T he issue also applies to using other screens at night. Like watching TV right until you go to bed, or even in bed. I guess using your phone in bed to set an alarm and whatnot is a more common case and thus is used as the example.

Re: Phones need 'bed mode' to protect sleep

#29
post #10

And yet Apple recently forced f.lux to take down the sideloaded version of their iOS app despite the fact that they have no public APIs available to do what f.lux does. See here: https://justgetflux.com/sideload/#notanymore HN Posting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10556375

Kudos to the BBC for increasing awareness of this issue with non-technical device users, who will need manufacturers to implement bedtime mode as a factory-installed feature.

Previous industries have sold products with negative health impacts, with changes eventually coming from consumer pushback, government regulation and/or class-action lawsuits.

There must be at least one mainstream device manufacturer who has a large advertising budget and can take a leadership position by implementing bedtime mode and advertising the health benefits.

Re: Phones need 'bed mode' to protect sleep

#30
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You did not read the article... It's not about putting down the phone, it's about the light it emits.

Maybe he did. The blue tones are no problem if you simply don't look at the damn thing all evening.

Or if you install software to control color temperature.
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