Is Sleeping With the TV On Bad for Your Health?

Sleeping with the TV on disrupts your sleep and can cause irritability and anxiety. It offers familiar comfort for some, but better alternatives exist.

Does Sleeping With the TV on Affect Your Health?

Sleeping with the TV on can harm your health. TVs emit blue light, which disrupts sleep. Bright lights and loud noises can make it hard to fall asleep or can wake you up during the night. Blue light can disrupt melatonin production.

It’s also possible that sleeping with the TV has some benefits. It can help you feel more comfortable as you fall asleep.

1. Disturbs Sleep

Experts recommend getting 7-8 hours of sleep each night. Sleeping with the TV on can make this hard because it keeps your mind stimulated. Using media as a sleep aid promotes poor sleep hygiene.

One study found that 15% of people surveyed had trouble falling asleep with the TV on. Nearly 20% felt tired when waking up.

Not getting enough sleep impairs your ability to focus, think clearly, and recall memories.

Other adverse effects of sleep deprivation on mood include:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Irritability
• Trouble with relationships

2. Interrupts Melatonin Production

Light helps manage your sleep-wake cycle. Sunlight keeps you awake during the day. Artificial light—and especially blue light—from devices or TVs can keep you awake at night.

Falling asleep with the TV on exposes you to blue light. This can decrease your sleep quality by suppressing melatonin, a hormone that regulates your sleep-wake cycle.

Blue light can delay sleep onset, or the time it takes to fall asleep. Some evidence suggests that sleep onset of less than 30 minutes signals good quality sleep.

The flickering of the TV screen may lengthen sleep onset and decrease rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. You may miss out on the essential restorative work your body does during REM sleep, such as consolidating memories.

3. Linked to Health Concerns

The stimulating audio and light from a TV can affect your mood. It can also increase your risk of complications, including:

• Heart disease
• Hypertension (high blood pressure)
• Kidney disease
• Obesity
• Stroke
• Type 2 diabetes

One study examined the effects of light on sleep and weight among 43,000 women aged 35-74. The researchers found that women who slept with a TV had a 17% higher risk of gaining weight than others. Women who slept with a room light did not have significant weight gain.

Can Sleeping With the TV On Offer Benefits?

Using media before bed may not affect sleep quality, despite the risks.

According to Vikas Jain, MD, a clinical assistant professor of sleep medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine, using the TV to fall asleep may offer benefits like:

• Source of white noise: Setting the volume on the TV not so loud that it prevents your body from going into sleep mode has a similar effect to using a white noise machine. The ambient noise helps decrease the time it takes you to fall asleep.
• Offers comfort: Streaming a movie or TV show you have seen multiple times offers familiarity. That’s especially the case if what you are watching is lighter in nature. This comfort may lessen any anxiety or racing thoughts that keep you awake. 
• Decreases blue light: Watching TV on an actual television instead of a phone or tablet right in front of your face may lessen your blue light exposure.

What Else Can Help You Sleep?

You may achieve these same benefits without turning on the TV. As many as half of the people use some sort of sound to help them fall asleep.

Sleep aids that provide calming audio without emitting blue light include:

• Ambient noises: Colors of noise, like brown, pink, or white noise, may help you sleep. Pink noise consists of low sound waves and is softer than white noise, which includes equal levels of all frequencies. Other calming sounds include fan, sea, and rain noises.
• Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR): Relaxing sounds or visuals, like tapping or typing, can calm you. There’s limited evidence on ASMR’s effects on sleep.
• Music: Music helps lower blood pressure and heart rate, and slow breathing. Consider playing your favorite classical or slow songs on a low volume to mimic the comfort and familiarity of your favorite TV show without blue light. 

Tips for Improving Your Sleep Routine

Consider slowly lessening your TV use to help improve your sleep hygiene. Try avoiding the TV screen and listening to only the audio. Turning off autoplay may also prevent changes in sound or flickering lights from disturbing you during lighter sleep stages. 

Make sure you don’t become too dependent on TV as a sleep aid. Reinforcing the link between sleep and TV can make it hard to drift off without it, especially in environments where you don’t have access.

Reinforce other calming bedtime behaviors, such as:

• Listen to calming music.
• Read a book.
• Take a warm bath.
• Try progressive muscle relaxation (PMR), a technique in which you clench and relax different body parts.
• Use a low light close to bedtime.

Having various sleep-promoting options helps avoid becoming too reliant on any one habit. You’ll be able to get a good night’s sleep no matter the environment you are in.