Oh heeeey! Haven’t seen you for a minute.
Anyway! This video isn’t gonna make a lot of people happy, myself included.
Ever wondered what all that time you spend on your phone right before you go nighty night is doing to
you? Yea, me neither. HOWEVER, what if I told you that it might actually be messing with your LIFE?
If you’re worried about that, then let’s watch a little further.
Visual stimulation right before bed not being good for you is not a novel concept.
“Stop playing videogames and go to sleep!” mama said. “Get off
your phone and go to bed!” mama said. “Stop eating the ants off the floor!”
mama said. Hahaha oh man, to be 18 again. The cool thing now is that we have a little
bit of data on the matter of phone before bed usage, and unfortunately,
signs are pointing to, “Mama, you right.” (DISCLAIMER)
Now before I jump into the nitty gritty details of this study, I need to mention a very important
disclaimer. And this goes for ANY of my videos where I specifically talk about a single study,
especially new ones, that have very little or no other research that are conducted similarly with
similar results. In other words, this is only ONE study thus we cannot draw any concrete conclusions
or recommednations based on its findings. It’s more of, “Oh, that’s cool to know” kind
of research and if you do wanna give it a shot, then cool, but don’t expect or don’t be upset
if your own findings are different. Again, warning you guys, don’t go running around touting these
findings as anything other than findings. Now let’s dig in.
In a study published in 2020, researchers took on the big question of, what effects
do using your mobile phone during bedtime have on your sleep quality, mood, and memory?
They took 38 sleepy adult participants, split em up into two groups, one not allowed to use
their phones 30 minutes before bed, and another given an UNLIMITED amount
of phone time right before night night. These participants were screened to ensure
they had no relevant medical conditions, are not excessive alcohol and caffeine users,
have no self-reported sleep disorders, nor use any sleeping aids or medication.
They’re just seemingly normal young adults that use their phones. A very rare breed.
The peeps in the intervention group were told, once again, to not use their phones
for 30 minutes before their usual bedtime. When possible, their phones were even set to child
mode, automatically blocking them from using their phones at their specific bedtimes so they can be
really goody two shoes and not mess up the data. Control group, they do whatever they want.
Fast forward four weeks and we see the following: The time it took participants to fall asleep,
or sleep latency, reduced from about 30 minutes to fall asleep down to 18 minutes,
a 12-minute improvement. *clap clap* Sleep duration, the amount of time
they were asleep, also went up by a small but noticeable 18 minutes.
And, measurements through sleep score surveys of overall sleep quality also noticeably improved.
Another finding was on pre-sleep arousal scales, a measurement of potential disturbances or
sensations one might experience right before bed that lead to difficulty falling asleep.
Restricting phone usage reduced this measurement, which might explain how subjects were falling
asleep faster since content on your phone might kick up this pre-sleep arousal.
Some other interesting findings: mood scores improved with phone restriction,
netting more positive and less negative effects on The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule survey.
And finally, improved reaction and working memory scores, not too surprising as sleep is neatly
connected to improved congnitive function So that’s better sleep quality, more sleep,
falling asleep faster, better mood, and probably improve your brain gains.
And for the sake of this channel, any improvement in sleep is always a positive
to your overall fitness gainz! Not too shabby of findings
for simply stopping your phone-loving selves from going on reddit or twitter,
ESPECIALLY twitter, 30 minutes before bed. But again, this is only ONE study, so don’t jump
into throwing this in your friends’ face just yet. There’s also other potential limitations of this
new study, like its sample size of 38 subjects and the measurement scales they used were largely
subjective. However, it is one of the first to control phone restriction to a specific time,
30 minutes before bed. So kudos to that. However, one thing the study didn’t really look
into, and I wished it did, is WHY phone use might hamper sleep. Some reasons might seem obvious,
like how the content you view before bed might be too stimulating and negatively affect your
ability to sleep, that whole pre-sleep arousal thing. It can also be the impact of blue light.
It is been shown that blue light produced by our computer and phone screens can promote
wakefulness. That’s why some sleep apps also use a blue light filter function to help with
sleep quality. It’ll be interesting to see a study that considers this, where one group
specifically filters out this yucky blue light and another doesn’t and then compare the results.
For now, though, it does seem to make sense to, if you can, but again it’s just one study,
before bed, hold back on sending that perfectly written response you had for that dude being
mean to you on twitter or wait until tomorrow morning before watching your favorite YouTuber
that hasn’t posted in over a year. Your sleep gainz will thank you.
Now I’m pretty sure a lot of you guys, literally tens of you, might have questions about the…
lack of content over the past year. Rest assured, I will be addressing this very soon and give you
all a bit more information as to what to expect moving forward. But I do want to thank all of
you that have expressed your love for this channel and wanting more content. I’ll give you guys a bit
more info soon. And I definitely appreciate you coming back and watching this video.
If you enjoyed this sleep video, especially if you watched it right before bed,
make sure to like it, leave a comment, and share it with your phone-loving friends. As always,
make sure to forever and always GET YOUR PROTEIN. Who leaves for a year?