Little white lies about blue light
Around 2013, a few things dominated hipster culture in the coffee shops of San Francisco’s sunny Mission district: fixies, pornstaches, lumberjack red flannel shirts with cuffed raw denim jeans, and laptop screens aggressively tinting yellow in the afternoon.
The f.lux app had gone viral on Twitter. Scientists confirmed* society’s growing suspicion of the smartphones that had taken over our lives less than a decade prior. Increased exposure to blue-tinted light from LED screens was robbing us of quality sleep. The solution* was an app that shifted the colors of a screen to the yellower, warmer end of the color spectrum at sunset.
The idea spread like wildfire. Apple sherlocked the feature into iPhones and Macs in 2016. Redmond’s copy machine followed in 2017. Oprah and Goop-y Gweneth added blue light blocking glasses to their lists of favorite things.
The frequently cited 2013 study about blue light and its affect on sleep had just 5 participants and questionable methodology. Melatonin is the hormone your brain produces to fall asleep. Melatonin levels—not sleep quality—were measured before and after the 30 minute experiment. There was no control group. There was a more significant suppression in melatonin from simply participating in the experiment (34 percentage points) than there was between red and blue light (13 percentage points). The better conclusion for this study would be to not participate in research studies when trying to fall asleep.
