The side effects of blue lights emitted by the screen of electronic devices. Adjust to “Night Shift Mode” to reduce their risk!

The blue light emitted by your cell phone screen restrains the production of melatonin, the hormone that controls your sleep-wake cycle (aka circadian rhythm). This makes it even more difficult to fall asleep and wake up the next day. But there are more side effect than just impacting the sleep quality.

As a person who writes this article and works with laptop or mobile device most of day and night except while sleeping, I’ve been somehow noticing the impact on my health specially at nights.

Therefore, my curiosity made me to do some researches and find what are side effects of light emitting from electronic devices at night.

Here is the report by Harvard Medical School, However the title of article is more in favor of the manufactures than the statement of the study they reported.

“Will blue light from electronic devices increase my risk of macular degeneration and blindness?”

They answered: NO

But in following they talk more about the study and their conclusion which is not very low risk neither.

The screens of modern electronic devices rely on LED technology. Typical screens have individually controlled red, green, and blue LEDs tightly packed together in a full-color device. However, it is the bright white-light LEDs, which backlight the displays in smartphones, tablets, and laptop computers, that produce the greatest amount of blue light.

White LEDs may actually emit more blue light than traditional light sources, even though the blue light might not be perceived by the user. This blue light is unlikely to pose a physical hazard to the retina. But it may stimulate the circadian clock (your internal biological clock) more than traditional light sources, keeping you awake, disrupting sleep, or having other effects on your circadian rhythm.

Furthermore, the current evidence does not support the use of blue light-blocking lenses to protect the health of the retina, and advertisers have even been fined for misleading claims about these types of lenses.

The use of these devices may disrupt sleep or disturb other aspects of your health or circadian rhythm. If you are one of the large number of people who fall into this category, talk to your doctor and take steps to limit your use of devices at night, when blue light is most likely to impact your biological clock.

Blue light from electronic devices, as well as higher efficiency indoor lighting and oncoming LED car headlights creates stress on our visual system and even skin sensors on our face when we are too close to the screen or using very bright color in dark room at night.

Night Shift mode allows to adjust the color and “shift the colors of your display to the warmer end of the color spectrum after dark.” The “warmer” the screen, the less blue light it emits. The less blue light it emits, the better for you.

First you need to search for “system preference” and open to find “Displays” setting, then you can choose to adjust the night shift and setting up the the time for automatic switch at night. See in the pictures below.