F.lux night shift11/2/2023 ![]() The current state of affairs can be traced to the 1992 invention in Japan of the high-brightness blue LED. The light emanating from electronic devices was not always such a hindrance to restful sleep. “The ideal would be to have the same light throughout your home as outside of it.” It remains to be seen how effective these remedies are, however, especially when compared with simply shutting the devices off. “If people can figure out ways to simulate changes in sunlight across the day, that would be perfect,” says Christian Cajochen, head of the Center for Chronobiology at the University of Basel in Switzerland. The solutions range from tinted eyeglasses to naturalistic lighting systems for the home and office. Motivated by such research, engineers and computer programmers are trying out various solutions to keep an already sleep-deprived population from losing more zzz's because of their electronic devices. have at least one electronic device in their bedroom, with a significant number of them sending or answering texts after they had initially fallen asleep. In 2014 the same organization determined that 89 percent of adults and 75 percent of children in the U.S. ![]() Nearly everyone in a survey conducted by the National Sleep Foundation in 2011, for example, used a television, computer, cell phone or similar device within an hour of going to bed at least a few nights a week. The problem is that people are increasingly staring into bright screens long into the night. During the day, when blue light is already naturally plentiful, a little extra exposure from electronic screens should not make much of a difference to anyone's physiology. But more recent studies show that blue light suppresses melatonin more effectively than any other visible wavelength, potentially leaving people more alert when they would otherwise start feeling drowsy.Īs it happens, smartphones, laptops and all kinds of electronic screens have become brighter and bluer over the past couple of decades because of the addition of powerful blue LEDs. Researchers have known for several decades that strong light of any kind can suppress melatonin, the hormone the brain produces at night to induce sleepiness. Since the Herfs released the program for free in 2009, f.lux has been downloaded more than 20 million times.īy following their aesthetic taste, the Herfs had stumbled on a curious twist in the way the body controls how we sleep. They are not the only ones who have appreciated the calming effect. ![]() “After we'd been using it for a while, we started to notice it seemed easier to wind down at night,” Lorna recalls, making it easier to fall asleep when they turned off their electronic devices. But they soon began to suspect that their new app, dubbed f.lux, might offer some health benefits as well. The Herfs' goal was to mimic natural shifts in ambient light as closely as possible, transitioning from the bright, bluish-white light characteristic of morning and afternoon sunshine to a dim, orange glow in the evening.Īt first, they simply intended to harmonize the lighting scheme in their home. They wrote some code to change the number and wavelength of the photons emitted by their computer screens as a day progressed. The tech-savvy couple engineered a crafty solution to minimize the discrepancy. ![]() She remembers thinking the electronic screens were “like little windows of artificial daylight,” spoiling the otherwise gentle ambience of the room. Now that she had become more attuned to differences in lighting, she noticed just how much the bright light from the computer screens clashed with the soft warmth of the incandescent bulbs that surrounded them. Late one evening Lorna descended to the living room, where computer screens were aglow. She and her husband, Michael, also a computer programmer, eventually installed bright fluorescent lights in their apartment's loft so that Lorna could paint at night and still have an accurate sense of what colors on the canvas would look like during the day. About a decade ago Los Angeles–based software developer Lorna Herf decided to try her hand at oil painting. ![]()
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