Most teens have fallen victim to spending time on their devices before bed.

Whether it’s five minutes on your phone or hours of mindless scrolling this bedtime ritual actually has a heavy impact on sleep.

Specifically, this overly normalized practice has integrated itself deeply into the lives of teenagers today, which is causing not only a disruption in their physical sleep schedules, but also their mental health.

Science teacher Ben Cook helps provide insight on the true impacts that this screen time can have on high school students.

“When your eyes sense blue light, it activates a signal cascade in your brain that produces something that acts as a melatonin inhibitor.”

Blue light, a short-wave form of light that one might recognize as what makes the sky blue, is actually emitted from all technological devices and can harm the sleep cycle tremendously if absorbed too close to bedtime.

The issue with this light causing the production of melatonin inhibitors is that melatonin is actually the chemical that the brain releases when it’s ready to sleep.

Without this vital aspect of the body’s rest initiation process, it makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to fall asleep at a reasonable hour.

Additionally, Cook shares how the lack of sleep can impact students’ performance in class.

“Monday is always the toughest day, and students have less capacity to do difficult tasks.”

Cook believes that this lack of performance quality is due to the lack of sleep quality they get over the weekends which is just a demonstration of how drastically the impact on the sleep cycle can impact student lives.

From the eyes of a student, it can be difficult to see that screen time has a say in your day-to-day life, especially with how tied it is into this generation’s culture.

An anonymous sophomore at Tahoma High School states how they don’t believe screen time impacts their sleep too heavily.

However, when asked if they’ve ever had a teacher, parent, or doctor talk to them about screen time and sleep their response revealed a different possibility.

“Yes, I have had my parents talk to me about it because they wanted me to get more sleep.”

It’s so easy to become blinded by the normalities in culture today, but it’s so important to take a step back every once and a while to see how this practice could really be affecting the quality of student lives.