For the past decade, every night I’ve drifted off to the sounds of a peaceful waterfall. I started using this type of good noise to counteract bad noise. At the time, I lived in an apartment in New York City. I could hear what my neighbours were watching on TV; a person on the street coughing. There were the sirens, the car doors slamming, the low hum of the city bus. Every sound felt like it was happening right next to me. But my good noise drowned out the moans and groans of the city. It was easier to both fall, and stay, asleep.

So I was somewhat perplexed when recent headlines declared: A new study says pink noise – a lesser known cousin of white noise – is ruining and wrecking our sleep! When I shared one headline on Instagram, people messaged me saying, “don’t take my white noise away!”

And I get it – personally I’ve come to rely on my waterfall sounds. Noise is now so ubiquitous, a noise machine appears on the majority of new baby registries1. The noise market is estimated to be worth one billion dollars annually2.

So… what’s going on? Is something that was touted as a sleep aid actually bad for our shut eye? The honest answer – a conclusion I’ve formed after a deep dive into the noise research and the new study – is more interesting than a simple yes or no.

The evidence base is a bit of a mess

I dug into two recent systematic reviews34 – papers that gathered all the evidence on noise and sleep to see if there are any overarching effects. And the evidence base… is a mess. For multiple reasons that make researching noise a huge headache.

First of all, the volume of the noise used in studies to date is all over the place: across studies, the volume of white or pink noise ranged from 20 decibels (a whisper) to 93 decibels (a concert). The labels are loose too when it comes to the type of noise – there’s no official definition of ‘white’ or ‘pink’ noise in terms of frequency, so people are kind of just… making it up. It differs from app to app. And the populations studied varied a lot, from toddlers to ICO patients to healthy adults, which makes any blanket claims about harms or benefits impossible when the results are nuanced. You also can’t blind someone to a humming machine, so many participants may have suspected they were being given a ‘sleep aid’ (which can influence the results on its own).

In short: we don’t have clear evidence that noise helps, or harms, sleep.

The new study

The new study looked at pink noise, one type of coloured noise. White noise is the most famous coloured noise, with a flat, staticky hum that sounds like you’re stuck between radio stations. Pink noise is its lesser-known cousin: it sounds a little lower pitched, more like the steady hum inside an airplane. And early evidence suggested pink noise may be better for our sleep than straight up white noise. It was worth looking into.

And the researchers did this with a decent design: there were 25 people, seven nights in a sleep lab, and six randomised conditions. The researchers running the study were blind to the conditions the participants were in, and it was measured with polysomnography, the electrode hook-up that reads your actual brain waves. (Interestingly, it was funded by the US Federal Aviation Administration, who I suspect want to figure out ways to mitigate airplane noise)

And the findings are not great news for the noise-machine-industry. The results found that ‘environmental noise’ (basically, airplane noise, car noise, all that annoying noise that tends to harm sleep) reduced deep sleep by about 23 minutes. No-one is surprised by this. But the finding that was surprising, that many major news outlets ran with, is that pink noise alone cut REM sleep by almost 19 minutes. And then adding pink noise on top of the environmental noise made things worse.

So here we have something we thought was good, that a well-designed study has found to be bad.

So… should we all stop using our noise machines?

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The missing detail

There’s one line buried in the methods of the new study that I think is very important:

The participants had never used a white noise machine before.

It was their very first night sleeping with the humming, staticky noise many of us have come to love. It’s quite possible some of them didn’t like the sound, that it disrupted their sleep as much as an airplane would. What the study essentially measured was how your brain copes with a brand-new noise on night one (and the results suggest: it doesn’t cope well).

For me, this detail raises a whole bunch of new questions. Do we habituate to white or pink noise over time? Over time, could it help sleep improve, if it minimises wake-ups overnight? Or, do these negative effects of white or pink noise persist? We don’t know.

Where I’ve landed

This new study suggests that coloured noise might not help sleep. But other research suggests it does, such as multiple studies that suggest coloured noise helps sleep quality in ICU patients. And, although it’s not a clean headline, it’s possible that two things can be true at once.

It is possible that the benefits of coloured noise may be contextual: perhaps it only helps by masking bad noise in places where sleep is severely disrupted, like in hospitals. Or, for people like me who used it in a busy city. Perhaps the benefits are greater if you actually like coloured noise, compared to people who are indifferent or find it annoying.

The reality is that when sleep gets hard, people have a tendency to reach for a product – a machine, an app, a supplement – because this feels more doable than a eight-week course of sleep therapy. And while the current science suggests that white and pink noise might not help, the advertising landscape promises they will. It’s a little disingenuous.

The science can say this much: The effects depend on your circumstances, don’t crank up the volume (especially for kids), ask yourself honestly if you need the noise, and if earplugs could do a better job.

In my house, I’ve lowered the volume on my machine and turned off my kids. She’s been fine. It may help that I no longer live in the middle of New York City, and even the gentlest hum can drown out the traffic noise and summer fireworks.

I’m curious: do you use noise to sleep, and do you think it helps? (Especially if you’ve done it for years, because you’re exactly who this study left out).

About 4 years ago, when I was in the middle of my PhD research, I ran an interview based study. The purpose of the study was to try a motivational interviewing technique that would uncover what people were actually doing before bed.

The idea to use this interviewing technique was relatively straightforward: behaviours that are driven by habit exist below our level of conscious awareness. So, therein lies a problem: if people don’t always realise what they’re doing in the moment, how can they tell us about it? A survey - psychology’s favourite tool! - wouldn’t really cut it. How can we find out what people are actually doing?

We used this interviewing technique to help people walk step-by-step through their evenings. (The results of this study were published in the British Journal of Health Psychology). One thing I discovered in this study that, in a good way, surprised me:

People procrastinated their bedtime for more reasons than I expected.

I thought people would procrastinate mostly for me-time, but the responses were varied. Some people were just on auto-pilot. They didn’t really choose to procrastinate, they just kept going. Others were really avoiding going to bed because they had trouble falling asleep. There were different types of bedtime procrastination.

So now, many years later (when I’ve finally had a spare moment?!), I’ve developed a bedtime procrastination type quiz.

You can take the quiz here.

You’ll answer six questions and find out your dominant bedtime procrastination type (it’s probably common to identify with more than one, I’m running with the theory that most people have a dominant type).

And one more thing came out of this study, that I very much didn’t expect.

Towards the end, I mentioned to the participants that we were trying to figure out some ways to help them reduce their procrastination (if that was a goal they had). I mentioned this so people could tell me what their ideal program would look like.

Multiple participants asked me: “Oh, could I buy this from you? Are you running a course?”*

This is a sentiment echoed in DMs and messages. So, first of all, I’m running a Bedtime Procrastination Masterclass. It’s a 60-minute deep dive the science of why you stay up late. The masterclass is for you if you’re curious about the research and what the studies actually show. If you find ‘sleep better’ tips underwhelming. Or if you regularly intend to go to bed earlier, but… just don’t.

(If you’re interested in less, I’ve also just published a Sleep Habits Guide. And watch this space for a course later this year).

Why am I excited about this?

Because it feels good to have developed something you asked for, informed by research. I really feel like it’s putting my PhD work to good use (rather than gathering dust on a shelf). And in a world of saturated creator courses, these offerings have been informed by research (and guided by your wants and needs).

Thank you so much for being here, and supporting me along the way.

And I hope to see you in the Masterclass next week.

Sleep well,

Vanessa

*(And because of research ethics, I have literally no way to contact these people, so I very much hope you’re reading this post)

About 4 years ago, when I was in the middle of my PhD research, I ran an interview based study. The purpose of the study was to try a motivational intervie…

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One thing I loathe to do as a mother is complain about how tired I am. We’ve heard it all before, and everyone is tired, right? Of women aged 20-39 in the United States; 52% aren’t mothers. And perhaps they’re night-shift workers, caregivers to other family members, maybe they even have high needs pets. So what makes mothers so special?

In many cases, these other life circumstances can be more temporary.

Choosing to become a mother is, somewhat, signing up for long-term sleep debt.

And one of the things that makes us complain (a term that could be better framed as wanting to be validated and seeking solidarity with fellow mums) is that this experience of tiredness is not exactly distributed evenly in our relationships.

Alas, as I approach my second Mother’s Day, I’m here to say… I’m tired. I hate how my general malaise stops me from showing up at work the way I used to, or having the energy to be more playful with my toddler. But I’m also here to ask, what, exactly, can we do about it?

To start, here’s what the research says about mothers and sleep.

The long-term sleep debt

Maternal sleep doesn’t fully recover for at least 6 years after birth -- and possibly longer (we don’t know, because that’s as far as the research has tracked). I’ll let that sink in, because the general consensus is that the infant stage sucks, but then all gets back to normal with your sleep.

Except maternal sleep loss still exists when your kids are in kindergarten.

Researchers tracked parents in Germany for up to 6 years after birth, and found that when their kids were 4-6, mothers were still sleeping 22 minutes less a night than before birth. 1 (Fathers were sleeping 14 minutes less). How satisfied mothers were with their sleep, a subjective measure, dropped and remained low. And higher household income and dual-parenting didn’t protect against this. Sleep just hadn’t returned to pre-pregnancy levels by the end of the study window. So we don’t actually know when, or if, it recovers.

We love you Dads, but…

Differences between mothers’ and fathers’ sleep persist after the infant stage.

A Swiss and French study (of families with kids aged 0–5 with sleep disorders) found that 60% of children were cared for exclusively by the mother at night, vs 9% by the father.2 (For the remaining 31%, it was a shared responsibility). The gender disparity persisted even when both parents worked full-time and after breastfeeding had ended.

And the effects of this weren’t ideal for how mothers felt. Greater maternal nighttime involvement was linked to increased psychological distress, and lower relationship satisfaction.

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Mothers can feel tired from the mental load even with adequate sleep duration

Because the United States doesn’t have mandated paid maternity or parental leave, some of the data heavily skews towards tired mums. So what if we looked to a country with greater gender equity?

Researchers in Sweden tracked 60 dual-working-parent couples with both wearable devices and self-report surveys.3 The devices showed that mothers actually slept longer than fathers (+28 min), but they still reported worse subjective sleep quality and more awakenings.

It’s fascinating that in a country with generous paternity leave, the objective sleep duration gap can flip, but the subjective sleep quality gap still persists.

(A recent analysis of 47 studies across 17 countries found fathers of infants aren’t sleeping great either.4 But they’re just sleeping less-badly than mothers, and via different mechanisms -- i.e., fathers tend to have a shorter total duration vs mothers who tend to have fragmented sleep).

The results from the Swedish study suggest that the cognitive/emotional load -- i.e., the “mental load” of motherhood -- can result in mums still feeling fatigued even if our smartwatches tell us our 7-or-so hours a night is perfectly fine.

What can we do about it?

We don’t have one simple answer for why mothers’ sleep is so uniquely disrupted compared to fathers’. Why this persists beyond infancy and never quite recovers. And why neither household income nor a country’s gender-equality ranking can entirely fix it.

As a professional-question-asker, I’m left with more questions than answers.

Is it just…biological? Wired into the maternal brain? Or is the support of a partner simply not enough? Do we need more help? Or are we hanging onto the idea that to be a mother is to suffer? To neglect your own needs? Is it… all of the above?

It’s safe to say that persisting gender inequalities in parenting and an ever-increasing mental load probably won’t be fixed by gifting a new sleep mask or silk pyjamas.

Until we know more, I’ll accept some validation. But the kind I want is different from the “you’re doing great, mama!” variety. It’s an acknowledgement that what’s making me tired is hard, and isn’t a failure of my sleep hygiene, my wind-down routine, or all the work I’ve put in to finally stop procrastinating my bedtime. It’s a problem that’s persisted even though many dads (including my husband!) do want to share the load.

For now, sure, I’ll take the silk pyjamas. I’ll just be wearing them while I’m really tired.

It’s that time of year where some of us change our clocks – the back and forth of springing forward and falling back. But even though we’re all inconvenienced twice a year, there’s no solid scientific reason why Daylight Saving Time exists.

Polls show that 6 in 10 Americans want to stop changing clocks altogether. And yet, for years, elected officials have ignored medical experts, instead picking the solution that would be worse for our health. So… what is going on? And how does Daylight Saving Time impact our health?

Why do we even have Daylight Saving?

It’s a pretty common myth that Daylight Saving Time (DST) was introduced for or by farmers. In reality they’ve lobbied against it around the world, because among other problems, it upsets the cows. The true origins of DST lie in the desire to maximise daylight for our leisure — and consumption.

Shifting the clocks back was originally proposed by a Kiwi entomologist George Hudson, who wanted more light to collect insects after-hours, and a British builder, William Willett, who liked to golf. DST was first introduced in Europe and the US during WWI to conserve light and heat in the evening. The thinking was that if we could harness the power of the sun for an extra hour, we could save on energy expenditure. Since then, it was abandoned, re-adopted and has been the standard for most U.S. states since the Uniform Time Act of 1966.

But there’s no good evidence that later daylight saves energy – people just use more heat in the morning, and tend to drive more when it’s lighter later in the day. And it’s a change that’s harmful to our health.

A common belief is that the main problem with DST is this switching of clocks back and forth. And it is a legitimate health concern — the clock switch in the spring has been associated with increases fatal traffic accidents in the morning, as well as workplace injuries and heart attacks.

But, surprisingly, that’s not the main health problem. The larger concern comes from the ongoing mismatch the clock shift creates between our social schedules and the sun.

The problem with Daylight Saving time is it screws up our body clock

Inside your brain, you have a master conductor called the SCN (Suprachiasmatic Nucleus). And every single cell in your heart, lungs, and gut has its own tiny clock that regulates everything from your blood pressure to your hunger levels. And these peripheral clocks take their cues from the SCN to stay in sync.

This system is hardwired to look for one thing every day… morning sunlight. When the light enters your eyes in the morning, it keeps your internal clock anchored to the 24-hour day. And then, your body clock ticks away in a fashion that helps you feel alert in the morning and naturally sleep at night.

BUT when we have an artificial clock change — like moving to Daylight Saving Time — we lose that morning light cue. Your internal rhythm starts to drift later. And because it stays light later in the evening, it delays the release of melatonin, making it harder to fall asleep. You can see how this happens in this awesome data visualisation from The Guardian of how much daylight shifts into the late evening.

And because we, unfortunately, still have to work and go to school, this creates a state of social jetlag. Your alarm says 7am, yet your body clock still thinks it’s 6am. The obvious problem is lost sleep during DST… but this lost sleep has flow-on effects. Losing sleep can increase levels of hormones that regulate hunger, and make it more likely for people to crave high-calorie foods. Over time, lost sleep can impact our metabolic health, heart health, as well as mood and overall well-being.

And the reality is that Standard Time best matches our body’s internal clock. As the American Academy of Sleep Medicine says:

“The daily cycle of natural light and darkness is the most powerful timing cue to synchronize our body’s internal clock. When we receive more light in the morning and darkness in the evening, our bodies and nature are better aligned, making it easier to wake up for our daily activities and easier to fall asleep at night.”

So why would a country propose Daylight Saving Time year-round?

The answer lies in economics: if it’s lighter after regular business hours, we can do more. And doing more means spending more.

We spend more with evening light

Over time, some unexpected lobbying groups have kept DST going, as well as lengthening the number of months we spend in ‘summer time’.

One is the candy industry, where the National Confectioners Association successfully lobbied to include October 31 within Daylight Saving Time to increase profits of Halloween. So children could trick-or-treat in the daylight, in 2007 DST was extended into early November.

There’s also the golf industry, which in the 1980s pushed for an extra month of DST. They argued that the extra hour of evening light would garner an extra $400 million in revenue. (This feels like an insane number, but keep in mind that golf generates $84.1 billion a year in the U.S. alone). And the daylight link has rung true before – In 1920, The Washington Post reported that golf ball sales in 1918, the first year of DST, increased by 20 percent.

Not to mention that we all use more fuel when it’s lighter later. One lobbying group estimated US gas stations have added an estimated $1 billion in annual sales since a month was added to DST in the 80s.

And the flip side of these evening activities? Lost sleep. Misaligned body clocks. And many people going to school and work in the dark (which beyond sleep loss, is associated with increased safety risks). But in a consumerist society, policies that increase spending tend to outlive policies that improve health.

The push to make Daylight Time permanent

Back in 2022, the U.S. Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act to make DST permanent across the country. It was introduced by Marco Rubio, then Senator from Florida — a state that would reap a huge benefit in… golf revenue. At the time, Rubio argued that permanent Daylight Saving Time would lead to an economic boost – people would spend 3.5% more if there was DST year-round. We know that in months where it’s lighter later in the day, people spend more money – so why not try to carry that effect over the winter months?

But the Sunshine Protection Act died in the House of Representatives. It was reintroduced in 2023 and 2025, but again didn’t move. It was a win for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, who lobbied against the change. After all, golf shouldn’t be more influential than all of the science and medical expertise we’d accumulated to date.

Just this February, another Florida lawmaker Gregory Steube introduced the Daylight Act of 2026, which proposes ending the clock change and permanently shifting U.S. time zones by 30 minutes — essentially splitting the difference between Standard and Daylight Saving Time. It is still very much hypothetical, as there are no recorded votes for the bill.

The chaos of the time switch

Luckily, not every country is going down this path of permanent DST. The EU voted to scrap time zone changes, and stay on Standard Time (although this hasn’t been fully implemented). Mexico, Japan, South Korea, China, Singapore and Dubai, have either abolished or don’t observe Daylight Saving Time. And Australia would very much benefit from a Standard Time intervention.

The chaos of DST is best illustrated in Australia, where half of the country changes the clocks, the other half doesn’t, and ultimately, there are up to 11 different time zones during summer. As people have rightly pointed out, it’s completely unhinged and Australia needs a time zone intervention.

Overall, Daylight Saving Time makes very little sense. Life is hard enough, and having all the clocks in sync just makes the most sense – like your circadian clock, Standard Time, and the sunrise. Changing the clocks so people can spend more and do more is silly, when we all know that it’s just better to do less.

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This article is an updated version of a video on my YouTube channel, Why Daylight Savings is a Costly Mistake. You can watch it here.

In 2014, I had an experience most up-and-coming YouTube creators only dream of. I posted a new video, and when I woke up it had 500,000 views. The video – on the effects of sleep deprivation – had been featured on the YouTube homepage and their daily trends show, YouTube Nation. (That whole sentence offers a very specific snapshot of internet history).

But the most surprising thing about this experience? The video is bad. It was an incredibly rudimentary stop-motion animation I made in a corner of my Sydney share-house bedroom. It tells a story of sleep deprivation that is unhelpful to improving sleep. Yet, it hit a nerve. People were tired. And tired people, I would soon discover, love watching videos about sleep in the wee hours of the morning.

I soon moved to NYC as a host for the Public Broadcasting Service, to make videos about psychology, health, and of course, sleep. I promise my stop-motion animation skills got better. Then my science communication brain got creative, and I pitched a Hollywood-style reality show about sleep to YouTube Originals. They bought it. In these episodes, we offered practical tips about sleep hygiene (as was the prevailing guidance): set a regular bedtime, consider deep breathing exercises, try separating your sleep and work space. Manage stress.

And then, the comments flooded in. There were thousands.

“It’s hard to actually implement these techniques”
”I try to stick to a sleep regime, but the habit of pulling an all-nighter just keeps coming back”
”Do ya’ll have any easier advice”

At first, I assumed the comments meant we needed better advice. But then I couldn’t find it. Like, how do you actually stop using your phone at night, besides having an extreme amount of discipline? I wanted details that didn’t exist, so I set out to investigate them.

And I might be the only person to say that YouTube comments launched my entire research agenda.

The problem with willpower

At first, I assumed the comments meant we needed better advice. I started reading the sleep literature more deeply, and started reading outside it. Then, late at night, I stumbled upon a letter to the editor that perfectly articulated what was bothering me: Much of our sleep advice asks people to be at their best at the exact moment they are least resourced – when they are exhausted.

Typically, sleep advice is framed in terms of willpower. We’re told to just set a routine. And if that routine fails? Try harder to stick to the routine!

Scientifically, this relies on reflective processes – slow, effortful thinking that requires us to be consciously making decisions and exercising self-control. (Some of you may know this as slow ‘System 2’ thinking from Daniel Kahneman’s classic book, Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow).

But when we’re exhausted at the end of a long day, self-control is one of the first things to go. Our minds are fatigued. So our sleep behaviours tend to be guided by automatic processes – habitual responses that happen without much conscious deliberation. (This is fast ‘System 1’ thinking). This explains why many sleep behaviours happen on autopilot – like reaching for our phone as we get into bed, or feeling anxious late at night when we know it’s hard to fall asleep.

And much sleep advice speaks primarily to System 2, even though many sleep behaviours are being driven by System 1.

In research, there’s a well-described phenomenon called the intention–behaviour gap: the space between what we plan to do and what we actually do. People can, for example, have strong intentions to go to bed earlier and still find themselves scrolling at midnight. And this isn’t because people don’t care! It’s because it’s incredibly hard to use discipline to change behaviours when you have strong exisiting habits.

Once I understood this, the YouTube comments made sense in a different way. Sleep advice typically isn’t designed for what drives our behaviour at night.

So, I wrote some kind of academic-fan-mail to A/Prof Amanda Rebar, the author of the letter to the editor, and she became one of my PhD advisors. My research became about understanding, and testing, the behavioural techniques that might shift our sleep habits.

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How do you change behaviour?

There is, conveniently, an entire field of science devoted to changing behaviour. In the early 2010s, a panel of experts tried to catalogue what, exactly, helps people change; and they landed on 93 specific behaviour change techniques. These include strategies like self-monitoring, changing the environment around you, planning for obstacles, or deliberately swapping one behaviour for another.

Where most sleep advice assumes behaviour changes because we want it to, these techniques prompt more practical questions: What tends to trigger the behaviour? What do you usually do next? and… What does that behaviour give you in the moment?

These questions get to the cues, repetition, and rewards that are the building blocks of our behaviours. Using screens before sleep, for example, often delivers relief, distraction, or a small sense of agency at the end of the day. (And if you don’t account for that reward, you can tell people to stop scrolling forever and they’ll keep scrolling anyway).

This is the logic behind a trial I led, published in Sleep Medicine, where we tested a short online intervention to reduce bedtime screen time by targeting habit rather than willpower. We used a small set of behaviour change techniques, including behavioural substitution, where people planned a specific alternative to scrolling in their wind-down routine. Across the experimental groups, nightly bedtime screen time dropped by 23-29 minutes, with small improvements in sleep quality over follow-up. It suggests that when you work with cues and rewards in mind, people can shift what they do at bedtime without needing unrealistic levels of discipline.

Where to now?

Behaviour change is still relatively new in the context of sleep, and a lot of these techniques haven’t yet been tested in people’s actual evenings. I could not have imagined I’d be someone testing them when my first rudimentary sleep video went viral now thirteen years ago.

But the reality is that generic, unrealistic sleep advice makes me mad. (And that turns out to be very motivating!). When advice makes people feel like they’ve failed, or that changing their sleep is unattainable, most of us stop trying.

So I’m still kicking around on the internet to communicate this point: start small. The goal isn’t perfect sleep. Some nights will be bad, and that’s not a personal flaw. Change is doable, even in the middle of a tired, ordinary evening, when you might be watching YouTube videos.

Most information about sleep, whether it’s a seemingly helpful TikTok or a brochure from your GP, seems to end with a list of rules. (Or a ‘protocol’, if it’s a bro-length podcast). Don’t use your phone one hour before bed, for example. Avoid caffeine six hours before sleep. Such generalisations are somewhat inevitable when recommendations need to be made at scale. But for many of us, I don’t think more rules are what’s needed. What’s missing is nuance: who we are, how we feel, how our very human lives shape our health.

Throughout this series, we’ve explored why evening screen time isn’t necessarily the nemesis of good sleep, and even how your personality shapes your nights. We’ve talked about why you can feel okay about your habits: the type of content you watch before bed doesn’t tend to disrupt sleep, perhaps bedtime procrastination isn’t inherently disastrous. And yet, many of us still feel bad about our sleep. Much of this guilt comes from misconceptions, like that all evening screen time is harmful, or that anything short of eight hours’ sleep is a failure (more than seven hours is generally recommended, and even that varies between individuals).

This final post looks beyond guilt, and the possibility that kindness (rather than stricter rules) might shape our evenings more than we realise. It’s an idea that I’ve been trying to bring to my own evenings, too.

The vague reality of self-compassion

Self-compassion is a poster child of great research outcomes. It’s linked to lower stress and anxiety, better sleep outcomes, and better health overall. But, like many concepts in psychology research, I find “self-compassion” somewhat vague. What, actually, is it?

Self-compassion is broadly described as being kind of yourself. Much research in this area was pioneered by Dr Kristin Neff, who defines it as having three elements:

1. Self-kindness (vs self-criticism)

2. Common humanity (vs isolation)

3. And mindfulness (vs over-identification)

Though even as someone familiar with this research for years, I still find it hard to grasp what increasing self-compassion looks like in our everyday lives. How can we actually be kind to ourselves in ways that might improve our health?

A new study

A recent randomised controlled trial (RCT) tackled this question by asking whether an online self-compassion intervention could reduce bedtime procrastination. Interestingly, it didn’t try to directly change sleep behaviour by a strategy like setting a bedtime. Instead, it targeted emotional barriers like self-blame and self-criticism to see if cultivating, basically, indirect good vibes could improve sleep timing.

The researchers randomised 459 young adults in China into either a waitlist or a 14-day self-compassion program, involving short daily videos and guided audio practices. The program was based on loving-kindness meditation: where you focus on self-kindness, normalising struggles, and recognising common humanity in others. (I’ve done loving-kindness meditation, and, for example, a video might have you repeat phrases like, “may I be safe, may I be healthy, and may I live with ease,” and then extend those wishes to friends, neighbours, and eventually towards somebody you loathe).

Compared to the waitlist, participants in the intervention group saw increases in self-compassion, how often they experienced pleasant emotional states, and something called future self-continuity (basically how connected someone feels to their future self). And - alongside these results - participants reported moderate reductions in bedtime procrastination.

The intervention was broad, and doesn’t suggest that self-compassion can “fix” sleep problems. But I think there’s an intriguing practical takeaway: that reducing self-criticism and increasing pleasant emotions may loosen a pattern of bedtime procrastination.

How self-compassion can affect sleep

In everyday life, compassion and being gentle on yourself can look surprisingly small. It might mean reminding yourself that difficulty disengaging at night is very common, and acknowledging why sleep matters for your future self without thinking your current behaviour is “bad”.

Self-compassion can be catching yourself doomscrolling and acknowledging the need behind it, by thinking “hey, this makes sense. Today was stressful, and I wanted to unwind. Tomorrow’s a new day.”

By removing the self-criticism and being kinder about sleep lapses, earlier bedtimes may become easier to choose next time, rather than something you try to force in the moment.

Zooming out

Personally, this shift in mindset is how I approach screen time research more broadly. Screen time is often framed as a negative, awful indulgence that’s a failure of willpower. But as a researcher, it’s crucial to approach topics without judgement (if you want any chance of designing a study minimal in bias!).

So I’ve wondered: What does our desire to doom scroll at 11pm or watch YouTube videos into the early hours tell us about ourselves? In some ways, it reveals what we need when our energy is at its lowest: me-time, a smooth brain activity, connection, entertainment. In my own peer-reviewed research, many people describe using screens to wind-down because they lack me-time during the day.

And crucially, much research suggests that the panic around evening screen time – from the effects of blue light to the impact of suspenseful content – may not be entirely justified. Yet, people still feel guilty about screen habits.

Letting go of our gremlins

I used to behave like a little bedtime gremlin, hiding my phone under the covers because I felt my habits were unhygienic. But after my own research and looking at the latest science, I’ve realised that shame was – possibly – doing more damage than my evening screen time.

My late-night screen time was often just a need for autonomy after a demanding day. And applying self-compassion – reminding myself that this struggle is common and visualising our future self with kindness rather than moral pressure – may help to break this pattern.

And if you do really struggle with stopping content and getting to bed at a reasonable hour, you shouldn’t just give up on changing your habits. Changing behaviour and building new routines takes time, and it can often be harder in the evenings. But building evening screen habits that work for you aren’t impossible.

I know this because my bedtime gremlin behaviour has evolved. I use a tablet to wind down – with crossword puzzles, Duolingo, and audiobooks as sleep aids. And this makes an earlier bedtime feel like a choice that I’m making for myself.

Look, I’m not perfect. There are nights when I procrastinate bedtime and use my phone in bed. Even though I’m an expert in the science of this, it still happens.

But then I remind myself that: occasionally it’s not that bad. And tomorrow, after all, is a new day.

In an effort to not be tired-all-the-time, a few years ago I figured I’d start taking a morning walk. Such a habit may come naturally to some – those with a dog to walk or morning commute may have no choice. But for a night owl who works from home? Going outside can be hard. Still, knowing the benefits of both morning sunlight and moving my body, I set out to change my behaviour. Years later, I really look forward to my morning coffee walk and podcast to get the day going.

Many of us have aspirations for crafting our evening routines. Perhaps we’ll start reading! Knitting! Listening to a meditation! Okay, I’ve intentionally overused exclamation points here, as we often approach these changes with verve(!). However, many of these habits don’t come to pass.

When we don’t form this new, desired habit, and often end up back on our devices, it can feel deflating. We often assume it’s a willpower problem. But what if evenings themselves are the problem? Research suggests that evenings are just hard. And it may be harder to form healthy habits in the evening than any other time of day.

In one 2017 study, researchers followed 48 students attempting to form a new habit – stretching their lower back and hips. One group were randomly assigned to stretch in the morning, the other in the evening before bedtime. The morning group managed to form a new habit after 106 days, about 3.5 months. But the evening group took much longer: 154 days. Just over 5 months.

What the researchers believe was behind this difference is something you’ve probably never thought of when considering your own habits. It’s cortisol. Cortisol – typically referred to as the “stress hormone” – is thought to play a role in habit development, influencing processes involved in attention and learning. Cortisol typically has a natural circadian rhythm, where it’s highest in the morning and declines toward the evening (assuming you’re not a nightshift worker or extreme night owl). In the study, researchers measured cortisol in saliva at different times of day, and cortisol helped explain why morning habits form faster: the more cortisol people had while stretching, the sooner this behaviour became automatic.

More research supports this idea that morning routines are more stable. We’re more reliable taking medication in the morning compared to the evening. People are more likely to follow a plan to eat fruit and veggies earlier in the day. Forming a meditation habit is more likely to stick in the morning. When we wake up, we’re creatures of habit, while evenings are more susceptible to the whims of our messy, modern lives.

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Now, for those of us out there who want to form evening habits that help support our sleep, it’s not all bad news. There’s an important nuance. Everything above is about forming a habit – the context, the repetition, the overall learning process. And, yes, forming habits at night may take more effort. But once a habit does take hold, evenings can actually work in your favour. Because of this general fatigue and frazzled cognition, we tend to rely on habit more in the evening.

A new study led by habits researcher extraordinaire Associate Professor Amanda Rebar (who was one of my PhD advisors) shows us just how much of daily life runs on autopilot. Over a week, participants were pinged on their phones and asked what they were doing and whether it felt intentional or automatic. About two-thirds of all actions were triggered by habit, and nearly nine out of ten were performed at least partly on autopilot. So we’re not actively deciding every single tiny thing we do each day: our routines and the influence of our environment mostly quietly guide us through the day.

From these results (and previous work by this research team), one thing gives me hope: when we’re low on willpower, which is typically in the evenings, we tend to fall back on habit even more. So if you go through the initial work to form a healthy habit to support sleep (even just one!), you’re more likely to stick to it when your brain is fried. Your exhausted future self is more likely to follow it without thinking.

So, why are sleep habits so hard to change?

When it comes to sticking to our intentions or trying to change for the better, at night our brains can work against us. Evenings are when our brains seem to be least equipped to change. But once a habit takes hold, that same tired brain can help keep it going.

When I first meet new people, they automatically start apologising for their sleep behaviours. Friends will tell me how they watch old episodes of Schitt’s Creek to wind down, regularly take melatonin, have a shot of Nyquil to fall asleep when they’re jet lagged. There’s a pretext that I’m judging them; they’re apologetic, asserting that their behaviour is bad, wrong, unhealthy. The reality is that I’m not judging people. At all. Through my research – and personal sleep struggles – it’s clear that sleep can be really hard. And we do all kinds of things to make the experience of drifting off a tad easier.

The weird scientist thing I actually do in my head is map out my friend’s personality traits.

Personality and sleep

The main way personality is understood in research is through the Big Five model - where your traits fall on a spectrum of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Personally, these traits help me understand others more compassionately than labelling people “boring”, “high-maintenance”, or “difficult” if we have differences of opinion.

If one of my friends has no interest in a new art gallery or travelling overseas? They’re not as open to new experiences. If someone gets stressed out easily, or is constantly offering me hand sanitiser? They’re probably higher in neuroticism. Where you land on these traits isn’t necessarily good or bad – rather it shapes how you experience the world and interact with others. And your personality can also affect your sleep.

In general, more conscientious people tend to be healthier. Not because this personality trait magically bestows good health, but because conscientious people are more likely to take medication, schedule and go to check-ups, and – in the case of sleep – practice healthy sleep behaviours.

Those with higher neuroticism – who often experience the lovely trio of racing thoughts, worry, rumination – often report poorer sleep quality and more difficulty falling asleep. But how some personality traits affect sleep are less intuitive.

One I find surprising is extraversion. Higher extraversion has been consistently linked to better sleep quality: longitudinal studies suggest more extroverted people show fewer sleep difficulties at baseline and years later, compared to their more introverted peers. Initially, I wondered if maybe that’s because this data is self-reported: are extroverts just more positive when filling out a survey? And this isn’t just my introvert jealousy, it’s definitely a thing – extraverts tend to report better moods. Still, device-based studies help us unpack what’s going on. Extraverts tend to have higher sleep efficiency: so there’s less time in bed trying to fall asleep or tossing and turning throughout the night, even though extraverts tend to go to bed later and at inconsistent times.

So why do extraverts tend to have better sleep quality? Some reasons why may include stronger social support, higher physical activity, and less worry and rumination around bedtime. So what does this mean for you?

How personality shapes screen use

Your personality can help explain why you experience certain sleep challenges. Are you more introverted or more neurotic? You may have trouble quieting your mind and falling asleep. (Possibly no one likes to admit they’re neurotic, though I am grimacing and nodding along). Are you extroverted? You may have trouble getting to bed at your intended time. The power of understanding personality is that it can help you figure out how improve your sleep in a way that actually fits you.

It can also help explain why we use screens at night.

Introverts and neuros might use screens at bedtime to calm negative emotions or explore niche interests. (I’ve just decided to use neuros to describe those who tend to be neurotic, because it makes us sound smart, and this is my blog so I can do whatever I want). Extraverts are more likely to use social media, or perhaps connect with friends while gaming.

And when you consider chronotype - your personal preference for early or late sleep timing - things get even more personal.

Your biological clock, stress, and anxiety

Evening types often have irregular sleep schedules, get fewer hours of sleep on workdays, and then binge-sleep on weekends to catch up. Kind-of-predictably, later bedtimes are common in evening types, and if you’re using screens late at night, it can push sleep even later. One large study found the effect of screen use on poor sleep quality was especially pronounced in self-identified night owls [ref]. (Early birds, by contrast, tend to avoid much of this weekend catch-up sleep, and maintain more regular schedules).

My own research has found that evening types are linked to higher bedtime procrastination. And – also not surprisingly – stress and anxiety are linked to both poorer sleep, and higher bedtime procrastination.

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Putting it all together

What does this all mean for you? Overall, these patterns help explain why some of us are more vulnerable to staying up late scrolling or streaming, and others seem to switch off easily. It’s not about willpower (I can’t stress this enough); it’s about psychological tendencies that shape how you use technology in the evenings.

So, if you’re a stressed-out-introverted-night-owl, it’s pretty likely you’d have trouble both getting to bed and falling asleep. And these sleep problems aren’t your fault! They’re not a moral failing – they reflect your unique psychology.

While personality traits and chronotype are relatively stable, the best thing you can do is manage your mental health and set up routines that match your temperament. Consider how you can quiet your mind: reduce stress, anxiety, worry, rumination. For some, that looks like specialised support, which can in turn help your sleep (my friend is an excellent anxiety coach and a great person to follow). For others, it might mean exercise, or a specific wind-down evening routine that can include screens.

And if you know you’re likely to push back bedtime, think about how your environment can cue you to go to bed. For me, I have smart lights dim at a certain time, bedtime alarms, a YouTube in-app timer, sleep mode on my phone (honestly, the works).

The bigger picture

In the first few posts of this series, we looked at external factors that can shape sleep – like content type, devices, and light. Looking inward (which can be a tad uncomfortable) helps explain why some of us can watch a horror film and drift off instantly, while others end up in a 2am Reddit rabbit hole.

Understanding your own tendencies is like the secret little bridge between knowing the research and applying it to your own life. And – even when you know exactly what’s going on – it can still feel incredibly difficult to change your behaviour. Next week, we’ll unpack why sleep habits might just be the hardest habit to change.

Often, when I know it’s probably time to go to bed, I just want to use my phone. I can’t explain why, exactly. Sometimes I just want to browse through Reddit. Other nights I’ve been pondering a question for hours and need to find the answer (last night: at what age can you introduce spicy foods to kids? The night before: what’s the largest airline in the world?). On particularly stressful evenings, I crave a mindless scroll. My experience of bedtime procrastination is shared by, according to early data, about half of adults. What’s unique about my experience of bedtime procrastination is that I’ve studied it more than almost anyone else.

If in 2014, when the term bedtime procrastination was first coined in research, you’d told me that 10 years later I’d have published six journal articles, four conference posters, and an entire PhD thesis on the subject matter, I would have thought this to be incredibly random. It is. (The most challenging thing about this post will be keeping it short). When I started researching bedtime procrastination in 2020, it was a new area – examined by only a handful of studies – but rapidly growing. And there was one fundamental question not asked by any of these studies that guided our work: is bedtime procrastination actually bad?

The state of the research

First of all, bedtime procrastination is the voluntary delay of going to bed, despite knowing it’ll make you feel worse the next day. Early studies were based on survey data. This meant researchers would send out a bedtime procrastination survey asking things like, “how often do you go to bed later than intended?” and then a sleep survey, “during the past month, how many hours of sleep did you get a night?” Most studies showed bedtime procrastination was linked to indicators of poor sleep (i.e., there was a correlation, but not causation). But there were exceptions. One study didn’t find significant results between bedtime procrastination and sleep duration. Some researchers surmised that if people procrastinated bedtime but could sleep in, sleep duration would remain unchanged. To figure out what was going on, I got to work.

I led a 2022 review and meta analysis on bedtime procrastination that analysed the results of 40+ studies. It provided some clarity: overall, bedtime procrastination was associated with shorter sleep duration, lower sleep quality, and higher daytime fatigue. But – like all good research! – we walked away with more questions. The most basic ones were: what are people actually doing to procrastinate? And why? Out of those 40+ studies, only one actually asked people about their experience, in their own words. So, we set out to do something that seems basic, but is often missing from health research: Talk to people.

Actually talking to people

Very quickly it became clear that, for many, bedtime procrastination comes from a need to recharge. In an interview-based study I led, many people voiced that they needed their evening me-time to wind down from a busy day, explore niche interests, and cope with difficult emotions. And the method of choice to procrastinate bedtime? Using screens. For some, it was playing videos games on a computer. For others, using a tablet to watch YouTube, or using a phone to scroll. As one participant put it, their screen use helped them “deal with any thoughts that come with the silence of night.”

This is where the is bedtime procrastination actually bad? question becomes tricky to answer. People also described their screen-procrastination-time as “fun” and “rewarding.” Hypothetically people could spend me-time with some music, a book, or journalling. But if that’s not actually “fun”? They’d probably just bounce back to screens. And people enjoy winding down at the end of the day. In subsequent clinical trial of a program to reduce procrastination, we tried to shift me-time earlier in the day: when people were commuting, at lunchtime, as soon as they got home from work. This wasn’t really effective. Most participants in the group still wanted something to do to wind down before bed. This made me wonder: if bedtime procrastination is this hard to shift, can we look closer to see what patterns actually matter?

Tracking bedtime procrastination, night by night

Because questionnaire data for bedtime procrastination is largely based on vibes (i.e., do you often delay bedtime?), I wanted to get more specific. So I recently published a study in Sleep Medicine that tracked minutes of nightly bedtime procrastination over two weeks. (I did warn you that I’ve studied this a lot). Keep in mind these results are based on people who signed up to a study to reduce their bedtime procrastination, so they may procrastinate more than the average person.

In week one of the study – before people began a program to reduce procrastination – people spent an average of 48 minutes on screens after their intended bedtime:

But averages often don’t tell the whole story. For some participants, bedtime procrastination was consistently low – 15 to 20 minutes a night. For others, their procrastination stretched beyond two hours every night. And for many, it fluctuated. When we looked at screen use by participant (rather than a general average), some nights were low-screen nights, and others involved hours of scrolling. (A previous study, which is still under review, suggests these ‘low-screen’ nights might be due to sleepiness – perhaps your body just craves sleep after a ‘high-screen’ night).

What we found is that bedtime procrastination varies in two key ways: How long you procrastinate (e.g., 15 minutes or two hours), and how much it changes from night to night.

Bedtime procrastination is cause for concern when it’s either lengthy in duration, highly variable night to night – or both. This is because both shorter sleep and irregular sleep timing, over many years, can have negative effects on your health.

When winding down isn’t procrastination

Many people told me they were concerned about 15-20 minutes of bedtime procrastination. And why? Because they thought watching TV for 15 minutes was “bad,” they felt guilty for taking 20 minutes of me-time for themselves, they thought playing video games at night was somehow wrong.

As my previous posts have shown, both blue screen light and the type of content matters far less than we first thought. Given that it’s normal to take 10-20 minutes to fall asleep, in my opinion this length of procrastination is short and – in most cases, nothing to stress about. It is still typically considered ‘consistent’ sleep if your bedtime, or wake time, shifts by 30 minutes or less a night. In fact, if this time helps you wind down, I’d argue it’s not necessarily procrastination, but a strategy.

If this sounds familiar, you need not feel guilty about your evening routine or sleep. Honestly, you deserve a gold star for figuring out a good wind down and actually getting to bed (even if it’s a tad late).

How to stop procrastinating bedtime

However, some bedtime procrastination does warrant attention. For those procrastinating consistently, or for long periods of time, one factor makes a difference in getting to bed earlier: having support.

In one trial that successfully reduced bedtime procrastination, participants spoke to a therapist weekly for four weeks. In our trial, people completed a habits assessment and program over three weeks to substitute their bedtime procrastination with a different activity. Both approaches worked, but neither was simple.

It’s hard to change your behaviour. Doing it alone is harder. Simple self-control strategies, like ‘just stop!’ or ‘set a goal’ likely won’t work. After all, the advice of ‘just go to bed!’ when people generally struggle to go to bed is some of the worst advice out there. I know because I’ve tried it (it didn’t work). If you want to tweak your bedtime behaviour, considering a habits approach is a good starting point. So is showing a little kindness towards your tired brain.

Reducing bedtime procrastination can be extra tricky because of your brain and situation. It’s especially common among people with ADHD, new parents, those with unfulfilling jobs, or strong screen habits. Next week’s post will discuss how your unique psychology can affect your sleep.

So, is bedtime procrastination actually bad? For some, it certainly can be. But for many, some short casual scrolling or late-night curiosity just means you're human.

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There is, I suppose, a way to use screens before sleep responsibly. Last week’s post discussed how blue screen light doesn’t harm sleep in the way we commonly think. Still, it’s obviously not great for your health to be on your fourth hour of TikTok in bed at 3am (even if you are learning that muskrats actually pick flowers).

I hate to use the word responsibly because at its core, it seems kind of boring. Our evening screen time is fun, delightfully carefree, slightly chaotic – a time to explore interests free from the demands of work or kids. At what other time of day can I go deep on the chemical composition of different sunscreens, or read Reddit theories about Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy's nineties style? It’s indulgent.

Thankfully, there is research to guide us on the best use of screens for sleep. Like how having a few glasses of wine and staying under the blood alcohol limit to drive is indulging responsibly, there’s a way to use screens responsibly too – if you want to enjoy yourself and still feel well-rested.

Does the type of content matter?

It seems commonsense that the type of content consumed before sleep would matter: surely a show with a cliff-hanger ending or violent video games would affect sleep. But some of the more perplexing results I’ve seen in the research suggest… it kind of doesn’t.

One controlled lab study tested whether binge-watching suspenseful TV before bed – with or without cliffhangers – actually harms sleep. Participants watched episodes of suspenseful shows like The Sinner, a crime anthology series on Netflix (some with cliff hangers, some without), or a neutral documentary about environmental sustainability in Europe (I do wonder if the filmmakers know their work was used as a proxy for kind-of-boring content). The suspenseful shows raised stress, heart rate, and cortisol before bed, especially when episodes ended on cliffhangers. But surprisingly, participants actually fell asleep about 3 minutes faster after the suspenseful shows compared to the documentary. Only when cliffhangers cut off the storyline mid-action did researchers detect pretty subtle changes in sleep quality.

Similarly, violent video games seem to have a negligible effect on sleep. A 2024 review of experimental studies indicate, on average, a 3.2 to 8.5-minute difference in sleep onset after gaming. These effects are similar to social media: a Swiss study compared the effects of 30 minutes of Snapchat and WhatsApp use, 30 minutes of a progressive muscle relaxation, and a control group that just went to bed. Participants in the social media group slept only about 6 minutes less than the control group. This was a statistically significant difference, but one that most people would hardly notice.

Although these results are surprising (they surprise me!), it’s important to note they come from controlled lab settings. Real life is messy. Are we just going to stop using Snapchat after 30 minutes? Turn off the TV after a cliffhanger? Probably not.

In the real world, the best screen choices are the ones you can actually walk away from. (For me, it’s a crossword or audiobook, not Instagram). And if you struggle to stop consuming content once you’ve started, one trick is to use a device that’s a little bit boring.

TV is queen

In a tier list of electronic devices, TV is superb. Compared to phones and tablets, TV is more passive – free of swiping, socialising, and doomscrolling. Some studies show regular bedtime TV viewing has little or no impact on sleep duration.

In one Australian study, researchers compared two different bedtime activities for adolescents: playing Call of Duty or watching March of Penguins, which researchers described as a “tranquil viewing experience” (I would agree). The documentary began 50 minutes before a ‘lights out’ time, and around 30% of participants fell asleep prior to lights out. This result is, in my opinion, delightful. (On my best days, I fall asleep to an episode of Grand Designs and never really know if they finished building the house). Conversely, no one in the video game group fell asleep prior to lights out. Although the gamers only took, on average, 4.5 minutes longer to fall asleep than the documentary group, this study was again in a lab setting. Irl, the Call of Duty group may just keep playing. For the penguin watchers, many were already asleep.

TV remotes had the original ‘sleep timer’ for a reason – In my opinion, TV creates the perfect vibe for drifting off (particularly if you find a show engaging enough to keep your mind from spiralling, but not binge-worthy enough to wreck your bedtime). And one of the best things about TV? It’s delightfully anti-social, in a ‘disruption free’ kind of way.

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The biggest thing: Go disruption free

A big culprit in how screens can harm sleep are disruptions after we’ve gotten into bed, or are already asleep – think notifications, messages, and emails.

Disruptions are common, and are clearly linked to poor sleep. One study found that over 70% of participants sent or received a text message between 10 pm and 6 am. Another found that university students woken by their phone at least weekly slept 48 minutes less and reported higher daytime sleepiness. A 2024 review reported that in-sleep disruptions can reduce sleep duration by 20-60 minutes. These sleep disruptions are why, even if an expert panel last year couldn’t agree that screens themselves are inherently harmful, they did agree on this: changing behavioural patterns around screens at bedtime matters.

In my own studies, disruptions seem to be a pain point for people who report poor sleep quality. Young professionals told me that, when using their phones as alarm clocks, they get sucked into Reddit overnight. New parents mentioned that having a ‘smart’ baby monitor on their phone means checking it overnight… and then also checking their email. When I struggled with insomnia about a decade ago, I stopped using my phone as an alarm clock. I put it out of reach while I was sleeping. At the time, I was just trying anything to improve my sleep. What I didn’t realise was I was being unintentionally responsible.

The biggest takeaway from the literature is that both screen and content type don’t really matter that much. March of the Penguins is certainly a tranquil viewing experience, except if Call of Duty is really nailing it for your wind down and mental health, probably just keep doing that. What does matter is creating a distraction-free environment for sleep: no texts, notifications, and anything else that will suck your brain back into your screen after you’ve gotten into bed.

Figuring how to eliminate distractions and wind down can lead to some technological creativity: personally, I keep my phone outside of my bedroom, and have some audiobooks and podcasts loaded onto an old tablet to use as a sleep aid.

And – finally – if you are really just having trouble getting into bed in the first place, next week’s post is for you. We’ll dive into the intricacies of bedtime procrastination – and why your best intentions aren’t always enough to get your best sleep.

It’s one of the most common pieces of sleep guidance out there: no screens before bed. No screens is prominent in the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s sleep hygiene recommendations: Turn off electronic devices at least 30 minutes before bedtime. And the reasoning behind this is relatively straightforward: “The artificial light generated by a laptop, tablet, or cell phone screen can interfere with your body’s sleepiness cues.”

But does this guidance stop us from using our screens at bedtime? Definitely not. As a sleep researcher, I’m very familiar with the recommendation and still use my phone before sleep, like, pretty much every night. I sometimes use my phone while watching TV, a practice researchers call ‘screen stacking’. And I’m not alone: an Australian report found that 70% of 18–24-year-olds use their phone right up until they go to sleep. And honestly, that 70% figure is probably on the conservative side. The problem with no screens is that when we inevitably use our screens up until sleep, we often feel like guilty little tech-addicted sheeple.

In a qualitative research study I led, participants indicated that they felt guilty using screens at bedtime. They expressed screen use was something they ‘shouldn’t’ do, while simultaneously explaining that they need to use screens before they go to sleep: to wind-down, reclaim me-time, process emotions, and explore niche interests. For some, screens before bed felt like a psychological need, rejuvenating their brain.

Too often, the conversation about sleep is dominated by rules and restrictions that can leave us feeling guilty or convinced we’re ‘failing’ at rest. The main reason we should stop feeling guilty is because the research on the harms of screens for sleep is far from conclusive.

What blue screen light does to your brain

The no screens guidance came from a logical place: blue screen light signals to the brain to suppress melatonin, a hormone that tells the body it’s time for sleep. This biological mechanism is pretty well-established.

We can see this play out in a recent study, where blue light exposure resulted in a clear suppression of melatonin, relative to red light. Healthy adults in Spain were exposed to either blue (464 nm) or red (631 nm) LED light for three hours, from 9 pm to midnight. While both groups saw a suppression in melatonin in the first hour (because really any colour light can do that), at the two-hour mark melatonin was still suppressed in the blue light group, while the red light group’s melatonin secretion bounced back.

Melatonin concentration under blue and red light conditions (Sanchez‑Cano et al., 2025)

We know what blue screen light does to our brains. Except – and I find this endlessly fascinating – melatonin suppression doesn’t always translate into large changes in our sleep.

For example, take a commonly cited Harvard lab study. For five consecutive nights, twelve adults were asked to read in a dimly lit room for four hours before a set sleep schedule of 10 pm-6 am. One condition used an e-reader, the other a paper book. The results? For the e-reader condition, the timing of their melatonin release was delayed by 90 minutes. The e-reader condition also showed a statistically significant increase in the time it took to fall asleep. But the real-world results are less concerning: even though it was statistically significant, the average increase in time to fall asleep was just 9.9 minutes. And the e-reader in question was actually an iPad on a stand 30cm away from the participants’ eyes, set to maximum brightness. Which is insane (it’s giving ‘the big light’ energy).

Other studies show the effects of bright screens on time to fall asleep are minimal. A Swiss study found that when a bright tablet screen was used for three hours – with or without blue-light-blocking glasses – the average difference in time to fall asleep was -1.9 minutes (meaning those who did not wear blue-light blocking glasses fell asleep slightly earlier). An Australian study compared a tablet with a bright screen, a dim screen, and a bright screen with a ‘night shift’ style app to reduce blue screen light. The entire difference in how long it took to fall asleep across all three conditions? Just 3.3 minutes. Other studies have found that ‘night shift’ has no effect on melatonin suppression or sleep (so sorry, I loved night shift as well).

This inconsistency in the effect of blue light on sleep carries across the scientific literature. A 2022 review found mixed evidence that blue light exposure changes sleep quality, and a 2024 review concluded that bright light doesn’t matter as much as how we manage evening screen time (meaning maintaining a reasonable bedtime and selecting relaxing content). Given this evidence, you are hopefully not too surprised that a panel of experts assembled by the National Sleep Foundation last year couldn’t reach a consensus on whether screen use harms sleep health for adults. So where do we go from here?

Rethinking blue light and sleep

First of all, balance is always key. Bright light during the day is thought to mitigate negative impacts (however small) of screen light on melatonin suppression – so getting outside during the day is a great way to get good rest at night.

Second, we need to move away from framing screens and sleep as purely negative. During a recent podcast interview, filmmaker Matt D’Avella told me he watched episodes of The Office to fall asleep. As a sleep researcher, I seem to attract such screen confessions: people often guiltily divulge they listen to audiobooks or watch TV up until sleep. And same, because my anxious lizard brain would devour itself with worry if not distracted by pretty pictures. First of all: let’s all feel good about this! Because if this is you, you’ve found a strategy to wind down. (Perhaps, in the present moment, you’d feel good watching TV before sleep if I called it my ‘protocol’). Positive self-talk is actually linked to better reported sleep quality, so the research says it’s good to give yourself a break.

Third, research has found that using specific devices or content types may be better for your wind-down and sleep. I’ll cover this in detail in next week’s post – for now, think relaxing content and limiting notifications/interaction. And it would be remiss of me not to mention bedtime procrastination, one of the main areas of my research. What good is using screens until sleep if we can’t stop? Bedtime procrastination deserves its own very detailed post – keep an eye out for this in the coming weeks. For now, if you do often procrastinate, try to use an external timer to signal it’s time to stop – think a bedtime alarm, app limits or sticking to one episode.

So, how bad is blue light for your sleep? For healthy adults, typical evening screen exposure produces small, inconsistent changes in when we fall asleep or for how long we sleep. In general, before bed it’s not a good idea to use an iPad at full brightness a mere 30cm away from your eyes. For four hours. But thanks to that, and other rigorous science, we do know that blue light isn’t wreaking havoc on our nights as much as we originally thought.

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For more than a decade now, I’ve been trying to improve my sleep. I’ve been so committed to this journey that I literally earned a PhD in sleep science. And yet, almost every night when I curl into bed, I still use my phone. Some nights I hide my phone under the blanket like a little bedtime gremlin, so my husband won’t point out the irony of a bedtime procrastination researcher doomscrolling. Despite my longtime obsession, doctoral degree, and career pivot into sleep research, I still feel guilty about my own sleep habits. Some nights, my sleep habits seem so wild, untamed, and unhygienic that they can’t be cleansed with a lavender pillow spray or hidden by a weighted blanket. And all of these ‘bad’ sleep habits revolve around screens.

So I was pretty surprised when, in late 2024, a panel of experts assembled by the National Sleep Foundation1 couldn’t reach a consensus on whether screen use harms sleep health for adults. The evidence is so murky that the top experts couldn’t agree screens are bad for sleep. So why do we feel guilty about using our phones before bed?

The main source of our collective phone guilt is the blue light narrative. The biological mechanism is well established: blue screen light signals the brain to suppress melatonin, a hormone that alerts the body that it’s time for sleep. However – and this is, honestly, one of the most fascinating things about this story – this mechanism doesn’t always result in impaired sleep. We know what blue screen light does to our brains, except studies in adults have had negligible real-world results. These results raise another question: is using our phones before bed really that bad?

The data on screens and sleep in adults is highly nuanced. To answer the ‘screens bad?’ question simply: for kids, adolescents, and adults with problematic screen use (i.e., regular and severe delay of sleep); yes, screens at bedtime likely harm your sleep. But for many of us adults who have been fed the ‘screens bad!’ narrative, I invite you to reconsider your beliefs in light of new evidence.

This evidence is so plentiful (and fascinating!) that one post couldn’t do it justice. Or, for that matter, give you a clear picture of whether and when and how to consider using your own screens in the evening. So, this is a six-part series on screens and sleep. Each week, for the next six weeks, we’ll deep dive into the latest scientific evidence to answer these questions:

1. How bad is blue light for your sleep?
2. Does the type of screen and content matter?
3. How bad is bedtime procrastination?
4. Do *I* need to change my screen habits before bed?
5. Why are sleep habits so hard to change?
6. How can I stop feeling guilty about my evening-screen-time?

I’m Dr Vanessa Hill, a sleep scientist and public educator. Apart from my life on screens – I created a PBS documentary2 exploring the attention economy and a YouTube Original reality show3 about sleep – I research bedtime procrastination. Procrastinating your sleep is deeply tied to screen use, and I’ve published numerous peer-reviewed studies4 and popular articles5 about the subject matter. I’m passionate about bedtime procrastination because it’s not inherently ‘bad’: most people think they’re sleeping ‘wrong’; and I’m here to tell you that you’re not. We need to move past our sleep shame.

I’ve been planning this series for the past few months, and this weekend the New York Times published a piece Why Do Screens Keep You Up? It May Not Be the Blue Light.6 It set off a wave of news coverage. It was an excellent starting point, though it lumped together research on children, adolescents and adults, and didn’t mention screens delaying your sleep or bedtime procrastination. (Guidance on screens in children and adolescents maintains that screens negatively impact sleep health, and I won’t be touching on kids and screens in this series). I guess there’s nothing like a big news moment to overcome my nerves and hit ‘publish.’

By the end of this series, I hope you’ll have a clear understanding of how screen habits fit into the bigger picture of your sleep health – and, if necessary, make any adjustments to your routine that work for your life. Most importantly, I hope you’ll feel better about the sleep you are getting.

See you on your screens next week 🤳