BYU Study Suggests Night Shift Mode Doesn't Help iPhone Users Sleep

[DaveTheRave]

I guess it really does not matter if you look at orange or blue TikTok videos until 3 am endless scrolling feeds are causing sleep issues, not the color of your screen

This. Let the phone charge overnight out of reach of your bed. That way you can reach it in the middle of the night.

I love to use my e-ink Kindle with dark mode. Reading in the dark is a great way to drift off to sleep!

 

[MrCrowbar]

Honestly I'd much rather my iPhone 12 mini be able to dim down more (without accessibility tricks) and without the flickering.

 

[ScreenSavers]

It helps me- I’ve been using it since the beginning and I used F.lux for years before.

 

[himanshumodi]

TBH, I wish we could turn down the brightness even further, for when using in the dark in bed. I still find the lowest setting too bright.

i guess this is another reason for people to use Kindles to read on. A market Apple doesn't do, or want to do, presumably thinking it'd undermine their iPad market.
They don't even update the book-sized iPad Mini properly with regular or worthwhile updates.

It’s not just brightness. Eink, screen of kindle is fundamentally different tech. There is no backlit screen. The light in kindle is normal light shining on the surface. iPad will always be more strenuous on your eyes than a kindle. Also, with a kindle you can’t switch to safari or Facebook.

 

[Infinitewisdom]

TBH, I wish we could turn down the brightness even further, for when using in the dark in bed. I still find the lowest setting too bright.

i guess this is another reason for people to use Kindles to read on. A market Apple doesn't do, or want to do, presumably thinking it'd undermine their iPad market.
They don't even update the book-sized iPad Mini properly with regular or worthwhile updates.

The intensity of light DEFINITELY has more of an impact than the color of the light. You can have night shift on, but if your brightness is sitting at 100%, that's not going to matter.

I'm surprised they only limited it to teenagers and people in their early to mid 20s. I wonder if they would've seen different results for older individuals.

 

[Frantisekj]

As they noted theer is mony things that affects sleep. Presented outcome does not says much anout sleep paterns participants were following. TIme going to bed, time to fell asleep, amount of light in room etc. Main measure of sleep quality should be amount or hormone melatonine body during sleep has produced.

 

[cmaier]

It helps me- I’ve been using it since the beginning and I used F.lux for years before.

Placebo effect.

 

[ScreenSavers]

Placebo effect.

Maybe for some.

 

[cmaier]

Maybe for some.

True. nobody who ever feels better from snake oil is benefiting from the placebo effect. It’s always everyone else.

 

[Tozovac]

I’m the opposite. I live warm tones at night.

Those who don’t love/need it should be thrilled that Apple hasn’t forced a one-size-fits-all dusk/nighttime lighting scheme! I am!

Or, the next study could show how how the iOS 7 flat design was pure genius and the best thing since sliced bread.

Again, if objective results proved that, I’d be fascinated to hear. Until then, with only one skin/option provided to users, the only “winners” are those who either tolerate, adjust to, or even prefer the newer, flatter, minimalist, cleaner (with commands hidden off-screen generally) interfaces.

 

[LeadingHeat]

BYU Study Suggests Night Shift Mode Doesn't Help iPhone Users Sleep​

A new study looking at the effects of low-light functions on smartphone users' sleeping habits suggests that features like Apple's Night Shift mode don't actually improve sleep at all.

The results suggest that blue light is only one factor that creates difficulty falling or staying asleep, and it's important not to discount the affect of physical interactions like texting, scrolling and posting on sleep outcomes.

Huh. Seems a little contradictory, no? Maybe you should focus less on click bait articles and a little more on journalism quality?

Scrolling on your phone at night in bed trains your brain that your bed ≠ sleep time. That’s the real issue. (Which the bedtime mode actually helps with, putting on do not disturb automatically as it gets close to bedtime. Lessening the chance that you’ll check your phone for new texts).

By the way, blue light does affect your body’s natural production of melatonin, a natural chemical that does help with sleep. So night shift does actually help (even if it’s slightly).

 

[musicpenguy]

For this to actually work as designed you need to setup an accessibility shortcut for color filters and only display the red spectrum. I’ve done this for a while now and it puts me to sleep within 10 minutes. But the night shift still has too much blue light in it to be as useful as it should be.

 

[5105973]

I don’t know. It seems to work for me. Reading on my iPhone puts me right out, often right in the middle of reading an article. The problem is I then drop the phone on my face or chest. And the 12 Pro Max is very heavy. But it beats having the iPad fall on my face back when I was reading on that at night! Oof

 

[I7guy]

Those who don’t love/need it should be thrilled that Apple hasn’t forced a one-size-fits-all dusk/nighttime lighting scheme! I am!

Agree!

Again, if objective results proved that, I’d be fascinated to hear. Until then, with only one skin/option provided to users, the only “winners” are those who either tolerate, adjust to, or even prefer the newer, flatter, minimalist, cleaner (with commands hidden off-screen generally) interfaces.

There is no absolute best. Everything is compromise. The current design has it's pros and cons. Every design has it's pros and cons. You just do not prefer it over the last design. I do prefer the minimalist ios 7 design over ios 6. To suggest some may want more is a given, which doesn't diminish the current design.

 

[B4rbelith]

TBH, I wish we could turn down the brightness even further, for when using in the dark in bed. I still find the lowest setting too bright.

i guess this is another reason for people to use Kindles to read on. A market Apple doesn't do, or want to do, presumably thinking it'd undermine their iPad market.
They don't even update the book-sized iPad Mini properly with regular or worthwhile updates.

Go into Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut > Reduce White Point. Triple click on the side button will toggle the brightness on and off. It reduces the brightness of the screen by quite a bit.

 

[jonblatho]

I can speak from experience that Night Shift has helped me with falling asleep, but only conditionally.

I think a lot of “blue light = harmful” claims are nonsense and/or grifting until proven otherwise (that is, claims that blue light poses serious/long-term health risks), but back in 2015, when I had just bought my 27" iMac, I suddenly found myself unwittingly staying awake past 4 AM because I just wasn’t getting tired for no apparent reason, until I installed f.lux since this was before Night Shift existed.

And it helped substantially, because while there’s virtually no evidence that blue light is harmful per se, blue light does suppress melatonin production. My phone hadn’t bothered me before, so I figure that overall light output is a factor along with likely some individual sensitivity component.

 

[ignatius345]

I find that, for me, the way I'm using my phone totally matters.

If I get into a doom-scroll, or even just a rabbit hole of scrolling through different headlines or social media crap, it's like my brain is constantly switching contexts and staying all amped up and reactive and I'll be awake probably forever -- and when I turn my phone off my brain is still jumping all over the place. I think in the old days it might be analagous to just changing a TV channel every two seconds. It's not good!

If, on the other hand, I'm just reading one thing, then I can just nod off because there's no constant context-switching.

That said, volume of light matters too, and melatonin aside it's just plain uncomfortable on the eyeballs to have a bright screen in a dark room. My personal trick for getting the screen truly dim is to go into Accessibility and choose a color filter that's shifted way over onto the red side. I've got it set up with a shortcut where triple-clicking the side button will toggle it. It's so red, in fact, that red text will actually disappear on screen sometimes.

 

[ignatius345]

TBH, I wish we could turn down the brightness even further, for when using in the dark in bed. I still find the lowest setting too bright.

Try a red color filters, and like @B4rbelith says, reducing the white point. You can actually use both together. It can get pretty dim!

 

[btrach144]

I wonder what setting they used for nightshift? Because the color temperature scale really varies. If you slide it to the left (less effect) it really looks not much different. If you slide it all the way to the right(maximum effect), it looks very very yellow.

 

[Mimiron]

Of course, it doesn't when we're checking our phones every 30 mins.

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

I hate when studies like this are presented to the public because the media and average person will read the headline and regurgitate it as if screen brightness, color temperature and light have no effects on melatonin or eye strain when it's simply not the case:

Most modern smartphones have some 500-1000+ nits at peak brightness. Any fool can tell that looking into one of these displays at full brightness will distort your sleep schedule or keep you up all night regardless of whether the blue light is blocked or not.

Try asking someone who's endured light torture whether or not light has any impact on sleep patterns or well-being.

Furthermore, if you have notifications on or are addicted to the Internet/media, which most of us are these days, then you'll be constantly checking your phone and consuming media all night long no matter what color temperature your iPhone's display is set to.

Try pitting a group of people with no restrictions on device usage vs. a group that can't use any displays past 8 pm and then tell me that screens and light have no impact on sleeping.

It's the total exposure time to light over a certain brightness level that's keeping people awake, not the color of the light even if the lack of blue light makes it more easy on the eyes.

 

[antdale]

I’m pretty sure this was a waste of a study, considering if you go to Apple’s website, it says that it is to make it easier on the eyes. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207570

 

[axantas]

I always wondered, why I almost immediately fall asleep in bed, while watching TV on a non Night Shift-Mode TV. This explains it then, no harm from the TV
carry on watching...

 

[fonzy91]

When you read about the study was designed you’ll see that they measured the sleep of 167 people by putting a gyroscope on their wrists and comparing the level of motion activity over 8 hours sleep. I hope we all realize we barely know enough about sleep, but that certainly a motion sensor is not enough to accurately determine differences in sleep quality. Meanwhile, Harvard research tells us that blue light was found to suppress melatonin and shift circadian rhythms. (Still doesn’t mean night shift works, but BYU is saying that phone or no phone makes no difference, which is definitely inaccurate). So check your sources properly before believing things.

 

[subi257]

I tried it when it was first announced and turned it back off 5 minutes later. I can't take the orange/yellow images. Besides I will always still have the TV on and the color difference makes me nuts. Just like when I go to somebodies house and their TV colors are all wonky....skintones are magenta and whites off. I once fixed a persons TV and they were mad the I messed up the picture. I work in TV engineering and color match video cameras on studio productions as part of my job, so I just can't take the wrong color wrong color.