Is Night Shift yellow screen mode on phones really effective?

Since 2017, Apple has introduced Night Shift into its products . This setting is intended to minimize the adverse effects of blue light emitted by phones, tablets, etc. However, some studies do not confirm the effectiveness of Night Shift.

Melatonin - a hormone that plays a huge role in sleep. When the sun rises and you are exposed to bright light, your body inhibits melatonin production, which helps you feel alert. The color temperature of light also changes during the day. Daylight exists at about 5600 Kelvin, which is blue in color. Sunset seems much warmer at around 3000 Kelvin. This natural color change, combined with decreasing brightness, tells our bodies to start producing melatonin, making us feel sleepy.

Phone screen in Night Shift mode.

Basic phone screens have a color temperature of 5600 Kelvin. Phone artificial light, also known as blue light, suppresses the production of melatonin, disrupting our feelings of sleepiness.

However, according to Rohan Nagare, a sleep researcher - sharing on VOX channel, some studies do not recognize the effectiveness of Night Shift.

The study looked at Night Shift set to warmer - meaning screen colors were strongly shifted towards the warmer end of the spectrum, and also Night Shift set to less warm - meaning there was only a slight warm shift . As a result, both modes suppressed melatonin, but slightly lower than when Night Shift was not turned on, and there was no difference between the two modes.

And while that may sound like Night Shift has no effect, spectrum is actually just one aspect. Scientists affirm that: " Not only the light spectrum but also the duration and amount of light shining into the eyes is also a big factor affecting sleep quality."

If you use your phone at night, don't worry too much if it's 20 minutes or 30 minutes. But if you go beyond that and you plan to watch a movie every night or watch three episodes of a Netflix show, it will accumulate a large circadian dose that will delay your sleepiness every day.

It's about duration, there's another issue that needs to be considered: the amount of light coming in. In fact, a light source closer to your eyes will be four times more powerful than the same light source twice as far away from you. If you're going to get 1000 lux into your eyes, it doesn't really matter if it's a warm source or a cool source, that level is too high for your eyes.

From the above results, to protect your eyes, reduce screen brightness, hold the phone away from your eyes, switch to warmer colors and limit the amount of time you spend looking at the screen every night.