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Sleep Is the First Casualty of Your Screen Habit

Offline.now experts say your phone is quietly wrecking your circadian rhythm long before you notice anxiety or burnout and that fixing sleep starts with how and when you scroll.

Jan 13, 2026

3 min

Eli SingerHarshi Sritharan

Everyone says they want to “sleep better” in the new year. Most start with new pillows, supplements or blackout curtains while the biggest sleep disruptor in the room is still glowing inches from their face.


Digital wellness platform Offline.now, founded by author and strategist Eli Singer, has found that we now spend about 10 of our 16 waking hours on screens, roughly 63% of our day. Psychotherapist Harshi Sritharan, MSW, RSW, who specializes in ADHD and modern anxiety, says sleep is often the first system to collapse under that load.


Harshi explains that phones and screens emit blue light that hits the retinal ganglion cells in our eyes and tells the brain it’s time to be alert, the opposite of what we need at night:


“When we’re leaning towards using our phones right before bed, that blue light hits our system and says, ‘We should be awake.’ It disrupts our circadian rhythm. For people with ADHD or other neurodiversity, whose rhythms are already fragile, adding late-night screen exposure completely throws things off.”


She notes that exposure between roughly 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. is particularly damaging for stress and sleep regulation, leaving people “tired all the time throughout the day.”


Morning habits can be just as destructive. Sritharan warns that checking your phone first thing essentially programs your brain to chase distraction:


“Don’t be on your phone first thing in the morning — it hijacks your attention and your dopamine for the rest of the day. After that kind of stimulation, everything else feels harder and less interesting.”


She also calls the snooze button “a pattern that’s making us more tired,” because it fragments REM sleep instead of helping us feel rested.


The good news: the data suggests you don’t need a perfect digital detox to see real benefits. A JAMA Network Open study on young adults found that reducing social media use for just one week, not quitting entirely; led to about a 24.8% drop in depression, 16.1% drop in anxiety, and 14.5% improvement in insomnia symptoms.


Singer argues that the real barrier isn’t willpower, it’s confidence. Offline.now’s research shows 8 in 10 people want a healthier relationship with tech, but more than half feel too overwhelmed to know where to start.


“When people tell us they feel overwhelmed, it’s not laziness. It’s a crisis of confidence,” says Singer. “Lasting change doesn’t require deleting Instagram or TikTok tomorrow. You need to win one personal victory today, and then another tomorrow. That’s how confidence rebuilds.”


For journalists covering sleep, mental health, or digital dependency, this story connects the dots between phones, dopamine and insomnia and offers a realistic alternative to the all-or-nothing “digital detox.”


Featured Experts

  • Harshi Sritharan, MSW, RSW – Psychotherapist specializing in ADHD, anxiety, insomnia and digital dependency. She explains how blue light, dopamine cycles and “doomscrolling before bed” undermine sleep, especially for neurodivergent clients.
  • Eli Singer – Founder of Offline.now and author of Offline.now: A Practical Guide to Healthy Digital Balance. He speaks to the behavioral data behind digital overwhelm, the confidence gap, and the Offline.now Matrix that turns vague resolutions into actionable micro-steps.


Expert interviews can be arranged through the Offline.now media team.


Connect with:
Eli Singer

Eli Singer

CEO

Mentor Coach for Neurodivergent Leaders & Technology Entrepreneurs

Coaching & LeadershipBoard AdvisorInnovation & CommercializationThought LeadershipLeadership Entreprenership Startups
Harshi Sritharan

Harshi Sritharan

Registered Social Worker (RSW)

Expert in child development, human behaviour, and behaviour modification

Human BehaviourLearning Strategies‎Behavior TherapyLearning DisabilitiesAttention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
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