This One Thing On Your Smartphone Can Impact Your Metabolism

We know that scrolling through our social media feeds first thing in the morning and right before we fall asleep probably isn’t the best for us. But not only does it totally mess up a mindful start to your morning, the bright blue light emitted by your screen seriously screws with your sleep patterns at night. According to a new study published in the journal PLOS One, all that bright light exposure from your smartphone is messing with your body in other ways too.

Researchers from Northwestern University in Chicago set out to explore how bright light exposure affects our metabolism and whether the time of day we receive that exposure matters.

Building off of previous research that found people who received the most bright light in the morning weighed less than those who were exposed to most of their bright light in the afternoon, the researchers from Northwestern randomly assigned adult participants to either three hours of blue-enriched light exposure (like the kind that comes from your iPhone or computer screen) right after waking up or before they turned in for the evening.