MONTREAL: If your bedtime ritual involves reading on a tablet, we’ve got some lamentable news for you. Participants reading from an iPad afore bed took about 10 minutes longer to fall asleep, had less melatonin in their blood, less REM slumber, and verbalized they were far more tired the next day.
As one of the study’s authors expounded to The Washington Post, “A lot of people cerebrate this is psychological. But what we showed is that reading from light-emitting, e-reader contrivances has profound biological effects.” 12 participants spent a fortnight in a slumber research lab, where, for five consecutive days, they read from an iPad and the, for five consecutive days, from a printed book.
The Wall Street Journal quotes an author from the study who verbally expressed: “Many people read things to avail them fall asleep. They probably don’t realize that this technology is genuinely making them less liable to feel somnolent.” Fret not: You’ve got a few options if you optate to keep reading part of your bedtime ritual.
Lamentably, the study did not test light-emitting e-ink readers, such as the Kindle Paperwhite – those would be a great integration for a future study.
