Using your smartphone just before falling asleep or leaving it on your pillow or bedside table can affect the quality of our rest, here's how to remedy
Let's face it, often and willingly before going to sleep we give a last check to the smartphone and then we put it on the bedside table near us. This habit can disturb our sleep and affect the quality of rest. Let's take a look at four methods to stop sleeping near the smartphone.
Why should we keep the smartphone away from our bedside table and why should we avoid using it just before sleeping? First of all, because the blue lights emitted by the smartphone screen strain our eyesight and prevent the brain from relaxing properly, disturbing the quality of sleep. Secondly, it is better to keep the smartphone away while we sleep because of the radiation. There is no counter evidence that the radiation from the device can be seriously dangerous to your health, but it definitely disturbs your rest. So it's best to keep your smartphone as far away from the bed as possible.
Night Mode
One technique could be to use Night Mode, which is already on the iPhone and now coming to Android Nougat as well. But the smartphone should still be moved away from the pillow or nightstand before falling asleep. In addition, checking social media continuously before bed can reactivate the brain at the expense of physical fatigue and prevent us from getting to sleep quickly. If the phone at hand, however, is a habit of yours even at night, let's see how to remedy it.
The alarm clock
Many people keep their smartphone on the nightstand because they use the alarm clock function. This is legitimate, if you really do not want to buy an alarm clock, but there is no need to keep the smartphone on the nightstand, we can put it somewhere else in the room, away from the bed. This will give us three advantages. One, we'll decrease the radiation we receive. Two, we'll prevent notifications from the various apps we use from unnecessarily waking us up in the middle of the night. Third, and perhaps the most important, to turn off the alarm clock we will have to get out of bed and in this way we will avoid setting continuous postponements and delays.
Emergency calls and messages
Many of us silence our phones at night to avoid being disturbed by notifications and messages. But what if an emergency call comes in? No problem, just turn on Do Not Disturb Mode. This is available on both iPhone and the latest Android smartphones. The feature turns off all notifications and alerts from various messages or email, as well as incoming calls. With the exception of some important contacts that we will schedule before going to sleep. To activate it on iOS devices just go Settings and then to Do Not Disturb Mode. Here you can program the times where you can activate it, on which days and decide which contacts will activate the ringtone. Same thing on Android. Again, just go to Settings and then to Do Not Disturb Mode. In devices running Android 5.0 or higher, you can set this function directly from the volume keys.
Music before going to sleep
Many people are used to listening to music or an audiobook before falling asleep. If you are among them, the advice is to do it with Bluetooth headphones, so as to avoid smartphone radiation or blue screen lights a few moments before falling asleep. In this way, the phone could also stay out of the room, since almost all Bluetooth headsets work with an average radius of 10 meters. There are headphones designed precisely for these cases and are called SleepPhones. But if you don't want to spend too much for a headset to use before going to sleep or to relax in bed in the afternoon, simple inexpensive Bluetooth headphones could be enough.
Extreme cases
If, however, your smartphone addiction leads you to fall asleep while playing games, while surfing the various social networks or while answering the latest work email, the solution to take is more drastic. We choose a corner of the house that we will dedicate only to the smartphone, equipped with charger and various connectors. Before going to bed we will leave the phone in this space and we will lie down without taking it back. It is better to decide on a place outside the bedroom. To avoid hearing notifications and getting up out of curiosity. If you are a true smartphone addict this is the only solution to make your life smartphone free.