We’re constantly reading about the dangers of scrolling through social media before trying to sleep. Blue screens before bed are the first thing sleep experts recommend quitting if you want more energy and better kip. Unfortunately, bedtime phone scrolling is something I’ve been doing for years, spending a good 40 minutes flicking between different stories and dog videos at 11pm. 

I know it’s a dreadful habit, but a constantly refreshing reel of anxiety-inducing information, likes and adorable animals (or whatever your algorithms serve you) is addictive by design. However, I’d really rather not scupper my chances at a good night’s sleep with that enticing blue light or end my days with my nerves worked up with doomscrolling.

Talk to those same sleep experts and they often stress the need for a winding-down activity at the end of the day instead. Journaling is supposed to get any anxieties out before bed (saving you from having yet another tooth-grinding dream), while reading is supposed to calm the mind, limit stimulation and keep your eyes off your phone. A recent study showed that reading a book in bed before going to sleep improved sleep quality, and an oft-cited 2009 study from Mindlab International at the University of Sussex found that reading can bring stress levels down by 68%.

Excited to see what impact it would have on me compared to my scrolling, I vowed to start reading every night for a month to see if I could break that pre-sleep ritual.

I picked a great book I was looking forward to reading (Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey, in case you’re wondering) and put it on my bedside table ready for what I thought was going to be a month spent tearing through it at great speed, reading at least a chapter a night.

The good news is, I broke my phone habit. I haven’t scrolled in bed all month, and I plan to continue my good sleep hygiene streak.

But I was wrong about reading specifically helping. In fact, I’ve barely touched my book, and certainly read nowhere near a chapter every evening. What I wasn’t noticing all those nights when I was glued to TikTok was that when I get into bed around 11pm, I’m usually pretty tired. And when I’m not pumping awakening blue light into my eyes, I’m tired enough to go straight to sleep, no reading needed.

Sometimes I’d blearily reach for the book and fight my way through a few pages but only on a couple of occasions was I alert enough to read this (so far excellent) book with any real enthusiasm. Sure, I’ve made it through a couple of chapters now, and yes, I would say I found the reading to be a good stress reliever if anything was playing on my mind. But most of the time, I’d simply put my head on my pillow and drift off quite happily without needing to read at all. 

Since my scrolling ban began, I’ve also noticed that my dreams have become so much more vivid. I’ve always been a dreamer, but in the digital wind-down days, they’d be a lot more vague; these days, my dreams feel almost real. I’ve had dreams in which I can feel the fabric on my skin or smell the breeze. I’ve visualised period pain and woken up drenched in sweat.

Thankfully, period pain-induced sleep interruptions excluded, I have been sleeping better and waking up feeling refreshed on a more regular basis than I had been before. Of course, it could be just a coincidence, but what are the odds that I’d start having some of the most vivid dreams of my life every night like this just as I stop my bedtime scrolling?

When I ask Stuart Kirk, clinic manager at Nuffield Health Norwich Fitness and Wellbeing Centre, he explains: “Dreaming is part of normal, healthy sleep patterns. Vivid dreams can happen from time to time and there could be a number of causes for this. REM (rapid eye movement) sleep tends to be when vivid dreams happen. This is because the brain becomes more active at this stage and, as a result, this is where the brain can get a little creative. Because phones (and blue light) can reduce the amount of time in slow-wave and REM, this could be why you’ve started to experience more vivid dreams.” 

Psychologist and sleep scientist Theresa Schnorbach says vivid dreams can also be caused by stress, issues with mental health, sleep deprivation, alcohol or other substances, and even pregnancy.

I’ve not been on a January-long bender or consistently stressed, and my mental health is as it always has been, I feel fairly confident ruling those out as causes. I usually have a good eight hours of sleep a night, and since I’ve just had my period, I’m pretty sure I’m not pregnant.

After telling her I usually watch TV with my fiancé on nights in before we go to sleep, Schnorbach, who works with Emma as a sleep expert, says: “If scrolling on your phone was a part of your regular wind-down process, it could also be that your body needs to time to adapt to this change in routine. Alternatively, your vivid dreams could be triggered by what you’re watching on TV, so it may be worth examining the content that you are viewing.

“I would suggest limiting stimulating activities, including phones and TV, in the hours before bed and instead build relaxing habits into your bedtime routine, such as reading a book, listening to a calming podcast or taking a bath. If you’d really like to get to the bottom of this, keeping a sleep journal might help you pinpoint the cause of your vivid dreams; be sure to keep track of your bed and wake times, as well as any activities that you suspect could be affecting your sleep.”

I don’t remember dreaming about anything related to what we’ve watched on TV, but maybe the dream journal idea is the thing I’ll try next, just in case. I’ll also be interested to see if my wild dreams calm down as my body adapts to this change in my routine.

Either way, since I’m now dropping off easily and waking up feeling refreshed after a night of uninterrupted sleep most of the time, I’m happy with my wild dreams and my peaceful, phone-free bedtime. 

Image: Getty