How long before bed
should you stop using
your phone?

Stop using your phone at least 30 minutes before you want to be asleep, and closer to an hour if you can manage it. That's where most sleep guidance lands, and it's a sensible place for most adults to start.

The exact number matters less than it seems. What you do on the phone, and whether you actually keep the cutoff, count for more than the gap between 30 and 45 minutes. Here's what the guidance says, what the cutoff protects, and how to pick one that fits your night.

The short answer

Trusted sources give slightly different numbers, all in the same neighborhood:

• At least 30 minutes. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine's list of healthy sleep habits says to turn off electronic devices at least 30 minutes before bedtime. The CDC's advice on sleep uses the same figure.
• About an hour. The Sleep Foundation says the hour before bed should be spent on relaxing activities that don't involve screens.
• An hour or two. A Cleveland Clinic article on phones and sleep calls putting your devices away an hour or two before bed a good rule, and it applies that to tablets and TVs as well as phones.

None of these marks a precise line where sleep suddenly improves, and the Cleveland Clinic piece admits that advice varies and that most research on bedtime screens has been done with children. Treat 30 minutes as the floor and an hour as a good target, then adjust for yourself.

Why the cutoff exists: light, stimulation and lost time

A screen cutoff guards against three different things at once, and researchers still disagree about which one matters most.

• Light. Light from screens, especially the blue part of the spectrum, can suppress melatonin, the hormone that rises in the evening as your body gets ready for sleep. How much that matters depends on how bright the screen is, how close, and for how long.
• Stimulation. A group chat, a work email or a stressful headline switches your mind on just when it should be slowing down. Cleveland Clinic sleep specialist Michelle Drerup thinks what you're looking at probably matters more than the blue light.
• Lost time. A phone can quietly push bedtime later. In a survey of more than 45,000 Norwegian students, each extra hour of screen use after going to bed was linked to 59% higher odds of insomnia symptoms and about 24 minutes less sleep. Social media was no worse than other screen activities, which the lead researcher read as a sign that the main cost is time. The study can't show cause and effect, though: people who sleep badly may simply reach for their phones more.

So the honest picture is mixed: one expert points to content, a large survey to time, and lab studies of bright screens to light. You don't have to pick a winner, because a cutoff deals with all three. For the longer version, read our guide on how to stop using your phone before bed.

Is 30 minutes enough?

For a lot of people, yes, at least to start with. It's the minimum both the AASM and the CDC give, and a 30-minute cutoff you keep will do more than a two-hour one that lasts until Thursday.

It may not be enough if any of these sound familiar:

• You put the phone down and then lie awake for a long time.
• The last thing you look at is often work, news or a tense conversation.
• "Thirty minutes before bed" keeps shrinking to twenty, then ten.
• Your phone is the first thing you reach for if you wake in the night.

If that sounds like you, move the cutoff 15 minutes earlier for a week and see what changes. And if you fall asleep easily and your last half hour on the phone is calm, 30 minutes may be all you need.

Does TV, an e-reader or an audiobook count?

Technically, yes: the guidance usually covers electronic devices in general. In practice they aren't all equal.

TV. The Sleep Foundation generally discourages TV before bed, and the Cleveland Clinic rule covers TVs too. That article also notes that passive use, like listening to music or watching a calm show, seems to affect sleep far less than texting or social media. If you watch something to unwind, pick something calm, decide on one episode, and turn autoplay off so the ending stays an ending.

E-readers. It depends on the device: a tablet is a screen like any other, while a basic e-ink reader is much closer to a paper book. More on that in the questions at the end.

Audiobooks and podcasts. Listening is about as passive as phone use gets, and the screen can stay dark. The risk is picking the phone up again when the episode ends; there's more on that below.

How to choose your own cutoff

The most useful cutoff starts from the one time you can't easily move: when you have to get up. Work backwards from there.

1. Start with your wake time. The AASM recommends getting up at the same time every day, even on weekends, so pick the time you need on most days.
2. Count back at least seven hours. The CDC recommends 7 or more hours of sleep a night for adults up to 60, and the AASM suggests a bedtime early enough for at least 7 to 8 hours.
3. Allow time to fall asleep. Add however long it usually takes you to drift off.
4. Subtract your cutoff. Thirty minutes at least, an hour if you can. That's when the phone goes down.
5. Tie it to something you already do. Brushing your teeth or switching off the big light makes a better trigger than a time on the clock.

Then give the time after your cutoff something to do. Our guide to building a night routine that actually sticks has a 25-minute version you can slide to fit.

Make the cutoff automatic

A cutoff you have to remember is one you'll forget on exactly the nights you're most tired. Both iPhone and Android can start one on a schedule, though menu names shift between versions and manufacturers.

On iPhone, set a sleep schedule in the Health app and add a wind down period, which can begin anywhere from 15 minutes to 3 hours before your bedtime. Sleep Focus switches on at the start of it, filtering notifications while still letting through the people you choose. Set the wind down length to match your cutoff.

On Android, look for Digital Wellbeing in Settings. Bedtime mode can run on a schedule or switch on while your phone charges, and it can turn the screen grayscale and dim the wallpaper. Focus mode goes further: it pauses the apps you pick, so you can't open them or get their notifications, and it can be scheduled too.

Both are easy to switch off when you're tempted, so think of them as a speed bump rather than a lock. Our guide to reducing screen time before bed with the tools already on your phone has more.

If you fall asleep to your phone

Plenty of people use their phone to fall asleep: a podcast, an audiobook, rain sounds. That can work, as long as the screen stays out of it.

• Pick what you'll listen to before your cutoff, not once you're in bed.
• Set a sleep timer. On iPhone, the Clock app's timer has a Stop Playing option that ends audio or video when it runs out, and many podcast and audiobook apps have a timer of their own.
• Put the phone face down, ideally somewhere you can't reach from the pillow, so a notification doesn't light up the room.
• Turn on Sleep Focus or Bedtime mode, so only the people who matter can get through.

If you can't sleep, the phone is the worst thing to reach for. The AASM suggests getting out of bed if you haven't fallen asleep after 20 minutes and doing something quiet in low light, and it singles out electronics as the thing to avoid.

A quick reference

If you fall asleep easily

Thirty minutes is a reasonable cutoff, as long as you actually keep it.

If you lie awake, or your last screen is work or news

Aim for an hour, and make the last thing you look at something calm.

If you unwind with TV

Choose something calm, decide on one episode, and turn autoplay off.

If you read before sleep

Paper, or an e-ink reader with the light turned low.

If you fall asleep to audio

Start it before your cutoff, with a sleep timer and the phone face down.

If you can't sleep

Get up after about 20 minutes, keep the lights low, and leave the phone where it is.

Common questions

How much screen time before bed is too much?

There's no agreed number of minutes. A more useful test is whether screens are eating into the seven or more hours you need, or following you into bed after the lights go out, which is exactly what the Norwegian survey above measured. If your phone regularly pushes bedtime later than you meant, that's too much for you, whatever your screen time report says.

Does night mode help?

Perhaps a little, but it's no substitute for a cutoff. Night Shift on iPhone and similar settings on Android make the screen warmer, and the Sleep Foundation says the most effective night modes both cut blue light and lower brightness. But when BYU researchers tested Night Shift with 167 young adults, they found no difference across the whole group between using a phone with Night Shift, using one without it, and no phone before bed at all. Among people averaging about seven hours of sleep, those who skipped the phone slept slightly better than both phone groups. Night mode is easier on the eyes; it doesn't change what you're looking at or for how long.

Does a Kindle count?

It depends which kind. In a small lab study, 12 adults who read on an iPad for four hours before bed took nearly 10 minutes longer to fall asleep and had less REM sleep than after reading a printed book. The same write-up notes that the basic Kindle the researchers measured didn't emit light at all. A plain e-ink reader is much closer to paper than to your phone, with no feed or notifications to pull you in. If yours has a built-in light, the Sleep Foundation suggests dimming the display as much as possible. Reading on a tablet or phone counts as screen time.