Modern-day screens are manufactured to match the bluish-color of the sun. The long exposure of screens can cause sleep deprivation and eye-strain at night.

Your screen is blue and slowly killing you.

Matthew Lew
UX Collective
Published in
3 min readDec 16, 2014

A f.luxable poem
by Matthew Lew.

They say sitting is the new smoking,
and extremely dangerous when you’re working.

But there’s another problem out there,
that isn’t about your posture or the shape of your chair.

Have you ever noticed at night,
when your cellphone shines bright,

an eerie glow of baby blue,
does not match the room’s warm hue?

The sun has cool color temperature at 6500K. Artificial lighting is warmer, with fluorescent lighting at 4200K and halogen lighting at 3400K.

That’s because your screen is calibrated to natural daylight,
and does not match your room’s warm incandescent nightlight.

It’s difficult to get good sleep,
when twelve o’clock slowly creeps.

In 2012, the American Medical Association’s made this recommendation: “Recognizes that exposure to excessive light at night… can disrupt sleep or exacerbate sleep disorders, especially in children and adolescents. This effect can be minimized by using dim red lighting in the nighttime bedroom environment.”

With just two hours of constant screen exposure,
it will delay your ability to slumber. (full disclosure)

Everyone knows the eye has rods and cones.
But we’ve discovered cells sensitive to blue light — making deep sleep prone.

Melatonin controls the constant circadian rhythm of day-night patterns which help you get sleep.

Melanopsin is a photopigment in the retina,
when exposed to blue daylight, will not stop your body’s stamina.

But the lack of light produces your body’s drowsy melatonin
that will keep yourself asleep until next mornin’.

Free plugin f.lux™ can improve your quality of sleep by adjusting the tint of your screen.

A free plugin called f.lux™ adjusts the screen’s color temperature,
that works on Mac/PC/Linux so our eyes are not strained by the hour.

Colors change throughout the day and f.lux can adapt to the time and location of the environment.

You can tell f.lux the ambient lighting conditions you are in,
and your location that syncs the sunrises and sunsets within.

Make sure you follow developers @herf and @lorna by supporting them,
and share this with your friends with a recommend.

Sign up to discover human stories that deepen your understanding of the world.

Free

Distraction-free reading. No ads.

Organize your knowledge with lists and highlights.

Tell your story. Find your audience.

Membership

Read member-only stories

Support writers you read most

Earn money for your writing

Listen to audio narrations

Read offline with the Medium app

Published in UX Collective

We believe designers are thinkers as much as they are makers. Curated stories on UX, Visual & Product Design. https://linktr.ee/uxc

Written by Matthew Lew

Design Infrastructure @DoorDash . Previously @GametimeUnited @Medium & @Eventbrite . I go to way too many concerts. 🏳️‍🌈 Love Brutalism.

No responses yet

What are your thoughts?