Study finds using Night Shift doesn’t improve sleep | Hacker News Reader

Study finds using Night Shift doesn’t improve sleep

arstechnica.com

125 pointsmpweiher69 comments

It may not help with sleeping better but nightshift mode seems to make it easier on the eyes at night in my experience so still worth enabling I think

This is why I change the color temperature in the evening, as well as using light theme during the day and dark themes in the evening/at night.

If it would help with sleep, then great. But even if it doesn't help with sleep, then I will still continue for the sake of my poor, old eyes.

It's a very faint side effect but the temperature change on my screen is often a very soft but very efficient trigger for me to shift into bedtime mindset.

Yeah, I have mine cranked all the way to the most amber. And when reading in bed at night, I'll also have the brightness at the absolute minimum.

Sometimes even that's not enough and I'll use the accessibility settings to make things even redder.

YOu get the most eye-friendly setup by going further in Accessibility settings and enabling VoiceOver. Start off with a slow speech setting, and try reading a few pages of text with it. I guess the most useful gesture for this is two-fingers-swipe-down, which will introduce VoiceOver to read all page elements from the current select one onwards

iBooks also has (or at least had last time I tried) pretty good VoiceOver support, will turn the pages automatically if you read with the mentioned two-fingers-swipe-down gesture.

The speech synth might need a little getting used to, but rest assured, what you're getting is way better then what people used to use in the 90s and earlier. Speech synths sounded a lot more unnatural then these days. I am mentioning this because it is actually a built-in feature. No need to install third-party apps. Of course, strictly speaking, this is a screen reader developed for the blind, but that shouldn't stop anyone to benefit from it when it comes to giving your eyes a break.

Even better, the analog (or old) solution: just shutdown or sleep the PC/screen for 20-30 min and meanwhile do anything else.

I try to stop being exposed to any electronic displays an hour before going to bed. There's enough to do, like meditate, read a bit, make lunch/es, shower, etc.

Exactly. Read a real book before bed. No blue light there.

I understand that technology is often a young-man's game. The drivers of the professional and hobbyist culture starts with college aged kids with lots of time on their hands, more or less. And a lot of that time is staying up late when it's quiet and no one is bothering you, coding, gaming, playing online, doing projects, etc.. at night, stereotypically while jacked up on caffeine.

But the stark reality is, when looking at anxiety and depression rates in this country we need to focus more on just how technology has become total immersion and reality augmenting to the point our brains never get to calm down from all the over-stimulation.

Quality sleep is one of many factors we could promote to reduce suicides and psychiatric disorders. The professional, educational and even hobbyist requirement that 20 somethings and teenagers spend endless hours at night attached to a screen needs to come with health hazard awareness akin to government warnings on packs of cigarettes, IMHO.

I think FOMO fuels a desire to stay attached to screens (or fuels a rejection of mind-calming activities), which in turn increases FOMO when 90% of social media is about productivity life hacks, boasting about doing fun things, impressive personal projects, and side hustles making money. People expect a public health solution to this problem but I suspect there is none besides increasing access to tools like therapy or digital sabbaticals.

It isn't FOMO, it is just that the real world is boring since nothing happens without a lot of effort. From a computer you can go and see what most parts of the world looks like via Google maps, play any game, watch people do anything you can think about on youtube etc, all with no effort from you. It is very hard for reality to compete with that.

For me it isn't the world is boring, it's just horribly painful all the time. So I numb myself in tech instead of trying to deal with it.

It's not productive to my happiness or sustainable, yet here I am just waiting it out.

One big change is to not have a TV in your bedroom.

I set nightshift mode to automatically turn on in the evenings on my computer. I basically don't even notice it - unless I play a (certain) game at night that does not seem to honor the amber shift, and it seems very blue and very bright. Additionally, I will occasionally read my Kindle at night, and after using the computer in nightshift mode, the Kindle does seem extra blue and extra bright. I got a kindle OASIS for that reason, since it has a warm light mode, and it definitely makes reading more comfortable.

I've had the same experience. I keep a deep orange filter on my monitor all the time, and I noticed my eyes started hurting a lot when I forgot to turn the filter back on after I had temporarily disabled it. There is also some evidence that prolonged exposure to blue light is correlated with macular degeneration, but there's no conclusive evidence that it causes it.

> I keep a deep orange filter on my monitor all the time

I've also started doing this recently and it helps a lot. The only time where it's a problem is when working with design/photography obviously. It's not a pleasant surprise when I turn it off and realize that colors are not that great.

I’ve been using f.lux for maybe 10 years on a fixed lower color temp. This is basically killing blues and renders everything pinkish. This has been a very good solution for my eye strain. Another very good one is to look at magic eye stereograms for 3-5 minutes a day

I tried using other people’s computer and the regular image is noticeably bothering my eyes.

I've never been able to see stereograms, and I'm pretty sure it's because my eyes are at slightly different roll angles from each other, due to a surgery when I was young. One of these days I should just try writing a program to decode them for me!

Eye convergence has always been marginal for me, and as I grow older it does tend to cause some mental strain when I'm tired. I haven't correlated that strain to blue light yet, though. I do use the blue light filter on my phone at night, though, and it does perhaps have a slightly positive psychological effect.

My eyes are sensitive to light (blue eyes are usually more sensitive) but the stereogram exercise is to exercise the eyes muscles. When we spend a lot of time reading off as screen close by we use a specific range. When looking at magic eye stereograms we are forced into a different mode and I found it helpful for myself. I could not see stereograms at first and had a hard time with a binocular microscope as well, the image would not converge into one. I first learned to use that (and I remember pulling one of the eyes from the side to make the two images converge into one and once converged I would let go the finger and let the eye muscles get used to the new position) then I struggled a couple of days with stereograms. After a day or two of trying I started to make the image pop up but would lose it quickly. After more exercises I could keep the image in focus and look change the gaze all over the image, stare at each corner, etc. When I managed to do that my eyes started to feel much better, the eye strain that had been bothering me for some months went away. The eye strain comes back when I spend too much time in front of the screen and looking at a few stereograms makes it go away. Not entirely sure if you had the same problem but I did hear a bunch of people healing eye strains with stereograms. It could possibly be a certain type of eye strain only. Hope you figure it out one day.

It could be a placebo, or Apple's implementation (I don't use a mac at night to judge) but the Windows and ChromeOS implementations seem to work for me. It doesn't improve sleep quality so much as helps me wind down at night and actually get to bed.

I can't say it helps eyestrain for me, either. The only effect I get is that sleepy time feeling comes in smoothly and naturally.

If a little speaker starts playing the sounds of the ocean 2 hours before you want to go to sleep, or a little bell starts ringing, or the smell of almonds wafts through the air, or you set an alarm 2 hours beforehand and slap a yellow sticker on your left wrist. Or anything else that isn't overly annoying and yet noticeable - that would probably have the same effect. All you really need is for something to be informing you, continuously but not invasively, that you need to start winding things down and to not start up anything that gets you pumped back up.

In that sense, nightshift, etc – are overengineered lies. Placebo effect. The results are real, but they are because you've decided you want to go to bed at a certain time, and you don't want to wind yourself up in the hour or two before that moment. All you really need is a reminder. Any reminder.

The 'science' behind the effect of blue light on your sleep is probably complete hogwash (it was always dubious, and unless the linked-to experiment is a statistical fluke, a lie, or seriously mismanaged - very hard to continue to support). But you don't need such fancy things. All you really need is a function that stops you from 'winding up' in the 2 hours before sleep. Anything will do. Shifting the colours on the screen is one of a billion ways that works.

Easier on the eyes -> more time spent using your phone and not sleeping?

The best thing I’ve done for my sleep is simply not needing Night Shift (or f.lux prior to that). The solution is just not being on your phone or computer before bed.

Now, I thought that wasn’t an option for years because my anxious and impulsive brain kept telling me I was too far behind, didn’t get enough done that day, need to learn x or y, etc. I was fully convinced by this part of myself.

What I discovered over time was that this habit was producing terrible work in a compounding fashion. I’d do terrible work, feel like shit about it, wake up feeling like shit, rinse, repeat.

These days I read a book at night, if circumstances allow, and sometimes listen to nice calming sounds or music at the same time. It eliminates me. I can fall asleep within 15m pretty reliably. Now instead of getting better at my job or finishing work that could probably wait, I enrich myself with something actually meaningful to me. I love to read philosophy and psychology for example.

I avoid screens for hours before bed, then fall asleep very normally, and wake up feeling way, way more refreshed than I used to.

And the best part? I do better work, I learn faster, I get things done sooner - I accomplished what I set out to do for years by simply doing less of it.

Night Shift isn’t going to save you from bad habits. To all of you who can endure it, I envy your physiology, because it was literally ruining me.

In the study there were three groups

A) No phone use

B) Normal phone use

C) Phone use with night shift

They found no group differences.

edit: They did find a differences for some subgroups (i.e. sleeping more than the median). I have to admit I only had a quick look at the paper.

Good sleep is so underrated. What really helped me was getting sunlight early in the day, at 7am or so for 10 minutes. This makes sure that I get sleepyheaded right after 9pm.

Andrew huberman has a great lecture on it, and it's fascinating how light exposure during early mornings can have such a drastic positive affect on sleep.

I find light helps with waking too - it’s incredibly good at kickstarting the daily rhythm. My wife loves to black out the sun in our bedroom and I really dislike it - I want to see the light as soon as it’s there.

I tend to wake up hours before she does so I can soak in the start of the day properly. I agree, it really does make a huge difference.

I think this is a good point the authors make:

"it is important to think about what portion of that stimulation is light emission versus other cognitive and psychological stimulations"

I think having some studies done that compare something like a chill game vs. facebook or news with and without nightshift would be valuable.

I have always been a user of f.lux [0] I tried Night Shift but it isn’t as red/orange as flux, I started having eyes issues as my eyes gotten used to flux. I switched back to flux and just better

[0] - https://justgetflux.com/

At night when I toggle flux on I can physically feel a sense of relief in and around my eyes. Based on this article Im starting to wonder if that reaction isnt simply for brightness and the rest is psychological.

Agreed, even the warmest setting of Night Shift is pretty mild compared to f.lux.

Flux is fantastic. I also use it with a few Philips Hue bulbs via HomeAssistant, which is really great when working in the evenings.

I like f.lux too. My monitor is 100% sRGB, so the settings I chose in f.lux are Daytime: Daylight, Sunset: 4000K, Bedtime: 3000K. I have it disabled for fullscreen media players.

What I look for is warm, but not so warm that colours get wildly distorted.

The lighting one uses in the room also needs to be complementary with the f.lux settings.

The only group that improved was those who skipped phone use before bed and allotted sufficient time for sleep:

> For individuals who slept more than 6.8 hours per night, there was some improvement in sleep quality for those who did not use their smartphones at all.

I’m a former night owl who has finally become a morning person. I like flux, and night shift. But, the biggest change came from adopting a fixed winddown routine. Night shift on its own did almost nothing for me. Here’s what I do now:

* I have cold turkey on my mac. It blocks distracting sites till 6 pm. Then it unblocks them till 8:30. At that point I have to stop

* I use Beeminder, and one of my goals is “less than 3 hours screen time on my phone”. I don’t have phone restrictions on, too finicky and also too easy to circumvent. But having to honestly answer the question at the end of the day and pay money if I fail seems to work

* So from 8:30-9 I kinda putter around and finish and device tasks I need to

* Between 9 and 10 I’ll write in a journal, do some stretches, brush teeth/wash face etc, and go for a walk if I haven’t walked enough. The only part on a device is the journal. I do appreciate dark mode and night shift for that. I have only lamps on in the house in this phase. If I have extra time I’ll read a book or ereader.

* I listen to a podcast while falling asleep with a smart speaker. If I was living with someone I’d use headphones. Either way, no phone in bedroom

* In the morning I get the news from the speaker, log my weight using my watch, and don’t use the phone till later. As much as possible I use my Apple Watch for quickly checking like weather, messages

Writing this out in hopes it may help someone who wants to make a similar shift. I spent the entirety of my life unable to keep a normal sleep schedule or wake up early.

But this has worked, and I am getting enough sleep, no alarm. Moreover it’s fairly modifiable to your life circumstances. The main one that involves others’ is house lighting.

The key elements for me were setting times when I don’t start on the phone and when I am done with the phone and computer, and dimming light and doing a routine at bed.

There’s a little known trick for making the iPhone screen less bright than the lowest level of brightness: go to Accessibility, Zoom, set Zoom level to 100% (none), then enable a Zoom filter for brightness. Then when you enable Zoom (I set mine to be the triple-click shortcut), it makes the screen really dim.

I use this every night and usually first thing in the morning as well.

A different way that I do it:

Settings, Accessibility, Accessibility Shortcut, select “Reduce White Point”

Now triple-clicking the side button will toggle a much lower brightness setting.

Cool, and amazingly these appear to be stackable. Enabling both at the same time makes the screen even dimmer.

+1 and you can have the Bedtime shortcut automatically toggle it too!

I use the triple click to make my screen greyscale and take the brightness to 5% for reading in bed.

Definitely reduces eye strain for me. When I'm pulling an all-nighter I occasionally witness the shift from night to day and it immediately hurts the eyes

I found that doing things that are too stimulating before bed is a bad idea anyway, no matter the type of light your eyes catch during it.

That's exactly what the article mentions. Brain stimulation, not eye stimulation, is what keeps someone up

If we can talk about the primary use cases for color temperature changes, then we can design appropriate experiments. If vendors create features to reduce eye strain, would it expose them to liability? http://dylanmulvin.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Dylan-Mulv...

> By treating them as a form of media prophylaxis, night modes can be understood as attempts to normatively disentangle a complex knot of untimely light, inflexible labor conditions, the convergence of work and leisure in portable screens, and the difficulty of engineering restful spaces and times ... By shifting and atomizing responsibility in a device interface, night modes leave only the individual user as accountable for the management of their own pain and discomfort. By transferring the duty of care to individuals and away from institutions, device manufacturers can tacitly protect themselves from accusations of negligence through the selection and propagation of new default settings.

It may or may not help with sleep, but reducing blue leds sure as hell helps with migraines and eye-strain.

Anyone who really knows study design have an opinion on whether they properly accounted for the increased likelihood to do computing late at night, and thus reduce sleep from been brain-amped before bed? (I doubt it, but I know just enough about study design to know I don't know study design and lots of other people don't too!)

I was never under the impression that night shift was for improving sleep. I believe it's supposed to reduce eye strain.

It's how Apple sells the feature: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207513

>Studies have shown that exposure to bright blue light in the evening can affect your circadian rhythms and make it harder to fall asleep. Night Shift uses your computer's clock and geolocation to determine when it's sunset in your location. It then automatically shifts the colors in your display to the warmer end of the spectrum.

Because night shift barely does anything. Try a strong red filter (I use a color filter from iOS accessibility settings or cf.lumen on Android). Even if that doesn’t actually improve my sleep, I’m alright with it “just” not burning my eyes at night and subjectively making me fall asleep more quickly.

I’ve found that nightshift doesn’t go nearly red enough. Windows nightlight will almost completely turn off blue colors by the time I’m ready to go to bed, while sometimes I will have to check if night shift is even enabled although it’s at maximum.

Oh, is that supposed to be a sleep aid? I just don't want my phone to blind me with blue light after dark, it hurts my eyes. Night mode is for comfort, I still turn the darn thing off when I'm ready to sleep.

Anecdata, but I have reduced-blue options enabled on every screen I can (including my desktop) 24/7 and I have zero problems with sleep. It just feels nicer on the eyes, whatever the time of day.

I think the idea behind Night Shift is to make you a bit more sleepy, so you naturally sleep earlier, not to avoid or replace sleep at all.

You still need to sleep of course, so this result is no surprise.

For Linux, the alternative is redshift.

KDE Plasma and the GNOME desktop now have the feature built-in as an optional feature in display settings.

IIRC they have the same artificial limit making them not all that useful. Redshift (or gammastep for wlroots waylanders) can go all the way red.

I just go hands off with tech 40 min before going to sleep. Seems to have helped me improve sleep, I just read a couple of pages in bed to relax and calm down.

It only works if

1. You're on an OLED

2. You use f.lux or cf.lumen and turn all of your blue light off! You should have an entirely red screen that will not hurt or impact your night vision.

This, by the way, is the one and only reason I root my phone (besides for ad blocking). I still cannot believe that proper night mode is NOT implemented by ANYONE. No, orange is not the same as TURNING THE PIXELS OFF!

For night shift to truly work, the phone should only display time and allow for an emergency call (or maybe allow running certain apps like Headspace). If you want to fall asleep, you need to stop stimulating your brain. Otherwise this will just prolong the pain and frustration that you can't sleep despite all these "measures".

And I bet the most common screen use is to consume social media, which is tailored to elicit strong emotions, thus keeping you awake and in a state of stress.

> The researchers further posited that mental stimulation, not the kind of light displayed, plays a role in impacting sleep quality for those who regularly get a sufficient amount of sleep.

So would the solution then be meditation before bed instead of the consumption of media, even books?

Off topic, but I used to find meditation so stimulating that it would keep me up at night, so I stopped doing it in the evening. I now resumed. Meditation is a really undescriptive word. It could mean a million different things.

Has there been any studies on the quantities of spectra your eyes would expect to get on a sunny day looking at grass or something? Then compare it to the spectra that comes off of a monitor and then you would have something to compare with.

How would you find participants for a study group that doesn't experience any daily screen time?

The wavelengths change throughout the day due to the angles involved and how much atmosphere sunlight has to go through. Generally speaking, early morning and evening are the most healthy to be out in.

Makes sense to me from a neurochemical point of view: browsing information, playing games, etc, regardless of blue light, will raise dopamine levels, which is a stimulant neuro-chemical.

Note that the study was done entirely on BYU undergrads. I would be interested in seeing how the results compare to the rest of the population.

> A sample of 167 emerging adults (ages 18-24; 71.3% female) with iPhones participated in the study.

BYU University is a Mormon university. I assume students there have a rather healthy sleep routine in general.

I can feel the pain in my eyes at night if I turn off nightshift just to see what the difference is.

The warm colors are great :)

I never thought that this would improve sleep. But it's certainly easier on the eye.

The article said not using the phone before bed helps:

> avoiding smartphone use before bed can improve your sleep.

Night Shift enabling makes me hate using my devices because the screen becomes dim and red and annoying to use. So I stop using them earlier. Win!

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