Study: Using Apple's Night Shift To Improve Your Sleep? Don't Bother (arstechnica.com) 54
Researchers at Brigham Young University conducted a study to see how much blue-light-reducing features like Apple's Night Shift improve sleep quality. Their conclusion? Night Shift doesn't help at all. From a report: In the study, which was published in Sleep Health, the BYU researchers assessed the sleep quality of 167 young adults, asking each to wear a wrist accelerometer before sleep. Participants were randomly assigned three conditions regarding iPhone use before bed: one group didn't use their iPhones at all, one group used their iPhones without Night Shift enabled, and another group used their iPhones with Night Shift enabled. "There were no significant differences in sleep outcomes across the three experimental groups," the researchers concluded. 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. But Night Shift didn't have a significant impact, and there was no difference between those who used smartphones and those who didn't when the amount of sleep was less than 6.8 hours per night. "This suggests that when you are super tired, you fall asleep no matter what you did just before bed... the sleep pressure is so high, there is really no effect of what happens before bedtime," said Chad Jensen, one of the researchers.
What were they studying again? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: What were they studying again? (Score:1)
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These were all good BYU kids, so all the measured activity was just from flipping through pages of the Book of Mormon.
I think they missed the point (Score:2)
I was under the impression that the purpose of "Night Shift" is to change the screen colors such that there is less eye strain (and, subjectively, it is working as intended). Never heard of it being intended to improve sleep in any way.
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Username checks out.
I find the 'Do not disturb' feature more useful to silence the early birds' messages/calls in the morning. That helps me stay asleep until it's my time to get up.
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Certainly less eye strain is part of the reason. That, in turn, is likely to lead to individuals being able to get to sleep more easily, without waiting until they are so tired they are ready to drop.
This quote from TFS suggests that the researchers also missed the point about ease of getting to sleep ""This suggests that when you are super tired, you fall asleep no matter what you did just before bed". Sure, anyone can fall asleep in bright sunlight if they are dog tired, but falling asleep is easier when
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There is evidence pointing to cooler temperature light causing you to be more alert than warm temperature light. Night Shift just shifts color temperature, so I assume it is operating on this idea.
I don't want to armchair what is probably a thorough study conducted by people far more knowledgeable than me, but this is Slashdot so what the hell. In theory, cooler temps should make you fall asleep later than you otherwise would have. The language used in the summary of "if you're super exhausted, you fall asl
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This being Slashdot, we can just conclude that Apple used some preliminary studies to support adding this feature which in turn aids in the purchasing of its product. Whether or not the effect is real, it increases Apple's bottom line. Next up, Apple introduces the gluten-free feature.
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Next up, Apple introduces the gluten-free feature.
Pssht. Apples have always been gluten-free!
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This being Slashdot, we can just conclude that Apple used some preliminary studies to support adding this feature which in turn aids in the purchasing of its product. Whether or not the effect is real, it increases Apple's bottom line. Next up, Apple introduces the gluten-free feature.
Windows 10 has it as well https://support.microsoft.com/... [microsoft.com] So does Linux https://itsfoss.com/night-shif... [itsfoss.com]
All that ever did for me was screw up things in Photoshop. I wonder if any of them have a lactose free or vegan version though?
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There is evidence pointing to cooler temperature light causing you to be more alert than warm temperature light.
Is there? Apple certainly never said that. I specifically recall when they announced the feature. They were very careful to say that there "might" be sleep benefits to Night Shift mode, based on evidence that cool light could cause sleep problems, but they deliberately and conspicuously never made any claims about the relative merits of cool light vs warm light. Most people inferred that Apple believed there were differences, but Apple never actually said so. It was an incredibly tightly scripted segment, a
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There's definitely a difference between bright light and dim light. I've gone many hours into the night unintentionally because I left a ceiling light on. It's difficult to feel tired with it on. I also feel an effect when I use night shift, but it's hard to tease out the reason since the implementation simply turns off blue and green light, therefore reducing overall brightness.
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There's definitely a difference between bright light and dim light. I've gone many hours into the night unintentionally because I left a ceiling light on. It's difficult to feel tired with it on. I also feel an effect when I use night shift, but it's hard to tease out the reason since the implementation simply turns off blue and green light, therefore reducing overall brightness.
My computer senses ambient light and dims accordingly. I've tried Night shift on the Mac - something similar exists for Windows and Linux. But it can make things annoying when having to redo images because of the color shift. The eye compensates a bit, but not for critical color matching.
It's not simple (Score:1)
Re: I think they missed the point (Score:2)
No, the purpose, as told e.g by NASA during their research on Mars missions, was to make sure your day/night cycles stay your day night cycles and you do not think it is day (bright bluish/whiteish) when it is night (soft yellowish/reddish).
Because just like with going to another time zone, your body actually picks up on that and adapts. By trying to sync its inner clock of hormone levels to what time of day it is.
So imagine it gets gradually more dark and yellow (dusk), and then suddenly it's bright bluei
Another useful tip; (Score:2)
Also, set you lamp to come on roughly 50-70 minutes before your alarm clock. Ideally gradually over 30 minutes. (Beware of LEDs and fluorescent lamps requiring specali tech to be dimmable.) Or 20 minutes later if they aren't dimmed.
That way they are guaranteed to shine when you're in a REM state of your cycle, and you'll wake up nicely from an actual dream, instead of being kicked out of bed like a masochist.
And avoid those puny daylight lamps that you put next to your bed. They suck and are crazy overprice
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No, the purpose, as told e.g by NASA during their research on Mars missions, was to make sure your day/night cycles stay your day night cycles and you do not think it is day (bright bluish/whiteish) when it is night (soft yellowish/reddish).
I thought the color shift was as close as nerds can get to a nice romantic candlelit dinner.
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No, it's for sleep.
There's considerable research showing blue light suppresses the production of melatonin, the sleep hormone. This keeps the brain "awake" and thus makes it harder for you go to sleep. It's why there are recommendations that one should avoid screens an hour b
Negative Side Effects (Score:2)
Re: Negative Side Effects (Score:2)
How many sceenshots do you make??
And: They are screenshots! I hope you are not trying to do photo editing via taking screenshots of your DSLR photos...
Are you that Web 0.1 [thedailywtf.com] guy?
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Soo... (Score:4, Funny)
No Shift, Sherlock?
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No Shift, Sherlock?
No shift? CAPSLOCK!
And next up in the "no fucking shit" department... (Score:1)
...turns out that dark mode actually causes more eyestrain and fucks up your eyes worse than light mode, by making them hypersensitive to natural light.
That's not what it is for!! (Score:1)
It is so your body doesn't think it's still day! So you aren't artificially kept awake!
Which has almost nothing whatsoever to do with sleep quality.
The only link is that you won't start making the day your night, or force-correct your rhythm.
The former gas shown to worsen sleep a *lot*. Which my lifetime of that can verify.
And the latter is known to everyone as jet lag
But if you are in a controlled environment when you always go to bed at a fixed time anyway, of course it won't do much! ... , except make it
Erratum: s/gas/has/ (Score:2)
(no text)
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It is so your body doesn't think it's still day! So you aren't artificially kept awake!
Which has almost nothing whatsoever to do with sleep quality.
If you're being kept awake, your sleep quality is pretty poor I'd say. They almost certainly factored duration of sleep into their studies. That's pretty much all we have to monitor the quality of sleep: duration / duration in light and deep sleep.
Of course your phone is just one source of light. (Score:2)
If you're sitting in a room illuminated by a 7000k LED daylight bulb, you wouldn't expect anything done to your phone to have any effect.
Leaving aside issues of eyestrain, the real question is, is changing the color temperature of your screen something that is *potentially* beneficial as *part* of a program of sleep hygiene? It would be more interesting to re-do the study with everyone following what as far as we could tell is an ideal sleep protocol, apart from phone use.
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Try the new extra strength version. It does wonders.
Flux / Night Shift are easier on my eyes (Score:2)
I find if I have it turned off, it's harder on my eyes in the evening. For me, anyway, that's reason enough to use it.
Although I recall that, somewhere along the way, Flux decided its original color profile needed updating - and when it got later, they screen started to get REALLY orange. I tried to use it like that for a couple days, but it felt like my eyes were bleeding - so I made it switch back to the original profile. I swear some coders don't know when to stop messing with their code...
Crappy study, inconclusive results, unrelated tech (Score:3)
They relied on wrist accelerometers to measure upper extremity movements; so they're using a proxy device with limited data collection ability to evaluate sleep quality, and they're judging your quality of sleep based on your arm movements. (I sleep like a corpse, but my sleep quality varies quite a bit. Their method would miscategorize my sleep as "good" rather than "poor" simply based on the factors of physical movement.)
As mentioned, the Night Shift feature (which exists across all OSes and device types at this point) is not intended to directly impact sleep quality, regardless of how sleep quality is determined. It's meant to adjust color gradients related to personal eye strain. I don't rely on a twin-settings Night Shift feature; I configure my workstation to different color gradients depending on time of day (morning/afternoon/evening/night) and weather conditions (sun brightness/overcast/rain), so my desktop's color gradients changes regularly... and it allows me to spend more time staring at my monitors without rubbing my eyes.
I hope these "scientists" stay in school and internalize the feedback the entire world is giving them about how to conduct meaningful research. This study, unfortunately, is meaningless.
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The theory behind color temperature as it relates to sleep is that red light doesn't suppress the production of melatonin nearly as much as blue light. (That part has been confirmed by studies, which I doubt are as crap as this one.) Melatonin is posited to synchronize the body's circadian rhythm to the day-night cycle. Moreso than affecting sleep quality, it regulates when you go to sleep. So, they're not even trying to measure the right thing.
For color reddening to work (assuming it can), you should be co
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But I get the feeling that, for it to have its intended effect on melatonin production, it does need to be extreme. You're trying to reproduce natural levels of pre-industrial nighttime blue light. In other words, none.
I was walking at night a few weeks ago, and the moonlit landscape definitely contained plenty of blue light.
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More than what there was in the days before light pollution, but still nothing compared to a phone in front of your face.
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I sleep like a corpse
How do you know? Do you monitor your body movement during sleep?
The use of upper body movement as a proxy for sleep quality has been studied quite heavily and correlates well directly with brainwave patterns. It forms the basis of medical diagnosies in sleep labs as well which haven't strapped people to large brain activity detectors in a long time.
That you personally *believe* you don't fit a well studied mold doesn't mean anything.
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How do you know? Do you monitor your body movement during sleep?
The use of upper body movement as a proxy for sleep quality has been studied quite heavily and correlates well directly with brainwave patterns. It forms the basis of medical diagnosies in sleep labs as well which haven't strapped people to large brain activity detectors in a long time.
That you personally *believe* you don't fit a well studied mold doesn't mean anything.
Answer: My partner... who, incidentally, studied the sciences and medicine. Their decade-plus of first-hand observations of my sleeping patterns, both informally and as part of their training.
Similarly, based on sleep labs I have participated in, I do NOT fit the norm. However, based on their own judgments, the reaffirmation of the "well-studied mold" is simply confirmation bias to the mold, rather than a proper understanding of the associations between sleep quality, brainwave patterns, and body movem
Samsung tells me to go to bed. (Score:2)
Avoid news at night. (Score:2)
Avoid reading the news near your bedtime, you will undoubtedly read something that is going to piss you off, and keep you up all night.
I've always slept extremely well at night... (Score:2)
...secure in the knowledge that I've not wasted all of that hard-earned money on Apple's overpriced fashion accessories.
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...secure in the knowledge that I've not wasted all of that hard-earned money on Apple's overpriced fashion accessories.
Says the guy who doesn't understand that Windows and Linux have the same feature. Don't let that interfere with your narrative though.
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...says the guy who thinks that just because a feature is on a device, that I have to automatically use it.
Just for the record, it's on none of my Linux devices - I use Gentoo Linux, it's a "roll your own" distro on which one can fine tune what is and is not installed on each build. I never include such features on my builds and therefore your statement above is factually incorrect anyway. It is not on any Linux system that I use.
I also use very little Windows anyway, I work for a company that considers Win
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...says the guy who thinks that just because a feature is on a device, that I have to automatically use it.
Wow - your powers of comprehension are pretty slim tonight. Use or don't use, using it has nothing to do with my noting it is available on all three platformsm but no one's forcing anyone to use anything.
Allow me to respond to what you wrote verbatim. You wrote:
"...secure in the knowledge that I've not wasted all of that hard-earned money on Apple's overpriced fashion accessories."
Directly addressing Night Shift.
In a reply to you, I wrote:
"Says the guy who doesn't understand that Windows and Linux have the same feature. Don't let that interfere with your narrative though."
Which addresses your exact statement that you
Next they will study... (Score:2)
...how wearing an Accelerometer on your wrist interferes with your sleep.
It's so much easier on the eyes (Score:1)
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Not sure why anyone would suggest to not bother enabling Night Shift. It's so much easier on the eyes, makes the screen much more pleasing to look at. I can't stand non-Night Shift colors during the evening/night. Plus, I'd have to say, between that and the new sleep/DND settings, my phone actually does help me get to sleep quicker. Go figure.
It depends on what you are doing. If you are doing work like photoshop or illustrating, a calibrated color monitor is important. Night shift screws that up badly.
I guess porn might make for more pleasing skin tones with Night shift or The Microsoft or Linux versions of the same? 8^)
Did they control for underwear? (Score:2)
Was there a difference among Hanes | Fruit of the Loom | temple garments?