How Bad Is Smartphone Use at Bedtime?

Sleep problems are common in older adults: In an AARP survey of 1,610 adults ages 40 and older conducted in 2024, more than 50 percent said they struggled to fall asleep or woke up too early. If you have trouble catching your z’s, you’ve probably heard that you should set aside your smartphone before bed.

This advice makes sense, especially for people with a habit of late-night scrolling. But new research suggests that electronic devices may not be the sleep saboteurs they’ve been made out to be.​​

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Concerns about the link between smartphones and sleep problems began to emerge over the past decade or so, fueled by a number of high-profile studies. A prevailing theory was that the blue light waves from LED bulbs in screens could disrupt people’s circadian rhythms by suppressing the release of the sleep hormone melatonin.

But recent research is calling these assumptions into question. For one thing, your device doesn’t put out all that much blue light. If you stand outside for one minute, you’ll get more blue light than you would using an iPhone for a full 24 hours, according to a study published in Photonics in 2024.​​

The National Sleep Foundation asked a panel of 16 experts to review the available scientific evidence on nighttime screen use for a report published in Sleep Health in 2024. The panel concluded that “in general, screen use impairs sleep health” for children and adolescents ages 5 to 19, but they could not agree on bedtime screen use for adults due to a lack of evidence. They couldn’t agree on whether the light from screens around bedtime disrupts sleep, either. There’s also the question of whether insomnia could be driving people to reach for their smartphones, creating a vicious cycle. Researchers are exploring this now.​​

Where does all this leave you? While scientists hash things out, your best bet is to exercise common sense. If you can avoid using your phone at bedtime, great, but if you do need it, switch to dark mode to dim the screen and switch to dark mode, so it has a black background, suggests Mariana G. Figueiro, director of the Light and Health Research Center at Mount Sinai.

Be mindful about the content you engage with, too. Authors of a study published in the Journal of Clinical Neurology in 2025 that surveyed 4,000 adults ages 20 to 69 about their evening screen use suggested that “cognitively stimulating content” such as videos and social media “may contribute to the negative impact of bedtime digital media.”​​

So using a meditation app on your phone to wind down might be fine, but reading a breaking news story or surfing YouTube can hinder your sleep regardless of whether the light from your screen affects your melatonin levels, Figueiro says.