What we lose when every screen glows blue
Our evenings are lit by phones. A short history of the light we stare at, and what it does to the night.
Cover image Photo by Akshar Dave / Unsplash
For most of history, the evening was orange: fire, candles, then warm bulbs. In barely fifteen years, it has turned blue. The light of the screen is the last thing many of us see before sleep.
Researchers still debate how much that light affects our sleep. What is less debated is how it changes the shape of the evening: fewer conversations, more scrolling, a day that never quite ends.
Night modes and warmer filters help a little. Putting the phone in another room helps a lot. The simplest advice is the oldest: let the evening be dark.
