tiktok pilots new 'sleep reminder' feature

as awareness of the importance of sleep on our physical and mental health grows, we have been inundated with tricks and tips to help us catch up on those critical zzz’s. from what you put on your body to what you put in your mouth, it seems that everyone wants to help us in our quest for quality sleep — including big technology companies.

the new feature is being tested on a limited number of tiktok profiles, located under the “screen time” selection in the settings menu, according to techcrunch . users are able to select what time they want the app to remind them to close it and head to bed. the app will also mute push notifications for seven hours after this time.

taking the phone to bed is recipe for a poor night’s sleep — blue light or not

take the iphone’s night shift mode, for example, a function that reduces the blue light emitted by your phone or tablet’s display, shifting it to a more subdued, warmer light. the idea is to cut down on the amount of blue light that reaches our eyes since research has shown that it can impact our sleep by disrupting the melatonin production in our bodies. and because we rely on melatonin to signal when it is time to start counting sheep, it is thought the light from our phones (and computers and tablets and tvs) can confuse our bodies, leading to a night of fraught sleep.

like everything fun in life, however, the connection between using your phone at bedtime and difficulty falling asleep isn’t as simple as cellphone marketers would have you believe. a study from brigham young university found participants who used the night shift mode still had poorer nights’ sleep when compared to adults who stopped using their phone altogether before bed.

annie vallières, a professor of psychology at université laval and member of the canadian sleep society , explains that it’s not just quality of light that impacts our sleep. distracting ourselves from sleep when it’s time to hit the hay can also have a major impact on when — and how well — we snooze.

sleepless in the north

while we would all love to believe that we are of the “ sleepless elite ,” who only require a few hours each night, odds are that we need a solid six to eight hours of sleep each and every night for a host of reasons. recently, university of british columbia researchers found that individuals who don’t get enough sleep may be more emotional, stressed, and have trouble finding pleasure in the good things in life. a good sleep schedule is also reportedly important for a satisfying sex life.

difficulty sleeping is not uncommon in canada, where approximately half of us report trouble getting or staying asleep, with about thirty per cent revealing they have trouble staying awake during the day.

factors that seem to influence sleeping troubles include being sedentary for more than four hours during the day, chronic stress and boredom — all of which are in large supply during this pandemic.

emjones@postmedia.com |  @jonesyjourn