what if i told you that there are randomized control trials that conclusively show that the color tint of your screen, blue or otherwise, does not affect sleep?
It's not that it improves sleep, it's that it eases your eye strain before bed, which is incredibly important for people who already work late. Anecdotal maybe, but consistent across the creatives and devs I know.
If I told you there are certain eye conditions/deformities that impact the refraction of light based on the wavelength? Lasik side effects can (and do) include increased distortion as wavelengths move closer to blue from red. And who cares if it works or not for sleep, it is shocking to me how little control modern laptops allow over their screens. Why is it not OS native to control gamma curves? Same question about audio equalization. Don't get me started on transparency and gradients that are clawing their way back. Looking at you "AI-Era" Google aesthetic and Liquid Glass. /rant
It was extremely helpful to me, to the point where I could pinpoint basically all my insomnia nights (retroactively, not the night they happened) to accidentally turning F.lux off. But the research on it seems pretty clear, so I'm convinced it's just a potent placebo effect. There's nothing wrong with that!
metareview CRD420251034611 "non-significant reduction in sleep onset latency" means blue light has been conclusively observed to not delay sleep - it doesn't mean that blue light has not yet been observed to delay sleep, we instead know conclusively that it does not.
something i learned from this journey is, going to bed too early is actually a more common clinical issue than staying up too late. like old people go to the doctor, and that's the issue that they have, they feel like they sleep way too much.
I think that’s uncharitable. The study has a very specific goal of assessing whether blue light can keep seniors with problems staying awake from falling asleep early. It’s neither obvious nor intended by the authors that conclusions about this population generalize further.
Especially in the context of the flux and night shift, which are intended to help people with the opposite problem (who want to sleep sooner rather than stay awake later), it’s an important distinction.