We’re all guilty of it. Lying in bed just before falling asleep, then reaching for our phone for one last scroll through Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram. An hour later we’re still on our phone, more tired than before, and watching a video about cute animals. Then in the morning, the first thing we do is reach for our phone, and we do it all again.
While everyone has heard about the way phones can disrupt our sleep and how they shouldn’t be kept in our bedrooms, there’s another little-known negative side effect to using phones that most of us wouldn’t even think of.
They can cause dark under-eye circles and age your skin.
Research has shown that the blue light emitted from digital devices can damage skin and accelerate the visible signs of ageing, and even cause dark under-eye circles. Blue light is a wavelength of light that we are exposed to via sunlight and digital devices such as televisions, phones, laptops, and tablets, and it communicates to our body that it’s daytime. As technology has advanced, we use digital devices now more than ever and well into the night, confusing our natural body clock.
When we sleep our skin cells repair themselves, and a first-time study be Estée Lauder has just discovered that blue light at night is impairing our skin cells’ ability to repair. Not only does scrolling through your phone late at night interrupt your natural body clock, it’s affecting your skin cells and making them ‘think’ it’s daytime, and thus they aren’t repairing. This, in turn, results in an accumulation of damage such as dark circles and visible signs of aging.
What can we do to fix it?
- Use an eye cream that targets damage cause by UVA light
- Switch your mobile phone to ‘night shift’ mode in the evening
- Get a blue light-blocking app for your phone
- Use a blue light filter for your devices or glasses
- Avoid using digital devices before bed
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