After a long day of classes, you put on a cozy pajama set and get into bed. As soon as you lie down, you pick up your phone and open up Instagram or TikTok. This is exactly what you should not do! Doom scrolling on social media after being on your computer all day is not healthy and it affects your sleeping habits. The National Library of Medicine proves this in a study where 19 participants avoided using their phones 30 minutes before bed, while the other 19 participants did not. The results showed that restricting phone use before bedtime for four weeks reduced sleep latency, increased sleep duration, improved sleep quality, reduced pre-sleep arousal, and improved positive affect and working memory.
A study published on Jama Network Open in March 2025 looks at screen usage for adults in the United States and Puerto Rico. Results from this study showed that people who use their phone right before bed had 33% lower sleep quality and slept 50 minutes less each week.
Looking at a screen before bed reduces the melatonin that your body produces. Without enough melatonin, it is harder to relax, therefore disrupting sleep patterns. You may be thinking, What else am I supposed to do before bed? There is an amazing alternative to scrolling on your phone: reading! Not only is reading a great way to wind down before bed, but it also reduces the blue light intake you get from your phone.
“The Reading Trial” was a random online trial with two different groups: one that read a book before bed and one who did not.
The results showed that 42% (156 people) who read before bed felt their sleep quality improved compared to 28% (112 people) who did not. Additionally, the study found that sleep disturbance is likely to be lower, on average, by between two and four units when reading a book in bed before sleeping. This means that if sleep disturbance was on a 1-100 scale, it would be between 2% to 4%, which is very low.
Reading before bed has been found to reduce stress up to 68%. It is recommended that adults read at least twenty minutes a night to have a restful sleep. There are easy ways to read with the lights off. There’s light up bookmarks, overhead reading lights, and lights that clamp onto the cover. While reading is very beneficial for sleep, books can be expensive. This is why you should consider purchasing a Kindle.
While a Kindle emits blue light, it is nowhere near the level of a phone. There are also settings to reduce screen brightness to avoid eye strain before bed. Kindles use e-ink technology, which does not reduce melatonin. Additionally, when you purchase a Kindle, you get three months of Kindle Unlimited for free. This gives you access to over 4 million books, so you can save a lot of money on paperbacks.
As a Kindle user myself, I can attest that reading before bed has significantly improved my sleeping habits. However, I was finding it frustrating to have to tap through every page. I had to put pillows under my arms to keep my Kindle at a good height, and I was getting annoyed.
Scrolling through Amazon, I came across a Kindle holder and remote. Since I got this, my reading habits have completely changed. I get excited to get in bed and read my book because I know it will relax me after a stressful day. I even use the remote for other purposes, such as walking on the treadmill. It is so convenient to stay tucked under the covers and turn the page without having to do anything but click a button!
The genre of the book you read is also important to improving sleep quality. Reading a romance, fiction, or cozy mystery book will help you wind down. Reading a thriller, horror, or fantasy book may do the opposite. Reading something scary before bed can increase your stress levels, therefore decreasing melatonin production, which defeats the purpose of reading in bed.
Now, of course, to see quality results from reading before bed, you need a five-star book. I recently read Binding 13 and Keeping 13 by Chloe Walsh, which were perfect reads before bed. This book is a dual point of view between Johnny Kavanagh, a star rugby player, and Shannon Lynch, the new girl in school. A sports romance with amazing friendships and comforting scenes is a great option for bedtime. There are six books in the series with more on the way, and it is being adapted into a TV show!
If you are more of a mystery reader, The Inheritance Games trilogy by Jennifer Lynn Barnes is a great option. The series follows a highschooler, Avery Grambs, who unexpectedly inherits money from Tobias Hawthorne. The catch is that Avery has never even heard of Tobias. She must live at the Hawthorne residence which is occupied by Tobias’s family including three boys her age, Grayson, Jameson, and Xander. There are puzzles, hidden clues, and more that need to be solved to understand why Avery receives this inheritance.
In a generation where scrolling social media is considered unwinding, it is time to step away from our phones and read a good book. Escape reality by living in the worlds written on pages.