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Whether it’s Instagram or Facebook, a late night scroll has become almost a religious routine — but it doesn’t exactly help you get those precious hours of sleep.
Now that all that could be about to change, thanks to a new feature in the latest iPhone iOS 9.3 update that actually wants to help you go to sleep.
Called ‘Night Shift’, the feature will use your clock and geolocation to work out when the sun is setting. It will then automatically shift the colours in your display to warmer shades like red and orange to make looking at the screen easier on your eyes.
When you wake up in the morning, it will return to its normal blue and white light-emitting settings.
Apple says it’s the result of “a lot of thinking in waking hours” and it’s certainly a necessary move.
Watch: Parents reveal what they really do after their children go to bed. (Post continues after video.)
With a growing number of us spending our last few hours before sleeping in front of a screen — whether that be an iPad, television, phone or laptop — it’s affecting our sleeping habits significantly.
A 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America found that using blue light emitting devices before bedtime not only makes it harder to fall asleep, it also delays the circadian clock that dictates your body rhythm, suppresses levels of the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin, affects the quality of your sleep once you actually get there — and also reduces your alertness the following morning. Delightful.
“We found that the use of portable light-emitting devices immediately before bedtime has biological effects that may perpetuate sleep deficiency and disrupt circadian rhythms, both of which can have adverse impacts on performance, health, and safety,” they concluded. (Post continues after gallery.)
Sleeping Positions
While it’s certainly a welcome move for those who religiously late night scroll themselves or are sick of being kept up by their partner’s activities, it doesn’t solve the problem altogether.
As aimlessly as your scrolling your Facebook feed can feel, anything that stimulates your brain is going to keep you more alert or more awake – even your bedside lamp and a good book. At least once a week, try to ditch the Netflix binges and limit your bedtime for just that. Your morning self will thank you for it.
Are you excited for the update?