Vanessa Hill

I think it's a really good way to wind down where we are downshifting in a way.

We are thinking of how we can relax and how we can just...

marked the end of our day in a way.

And I really like TV for that compared to phones.

In some ways, yes.

And I mean, to anyone listening to this who thinks that this is bad advice, I would encourage them to read the latest research because there is so much that has come out in the last two years that has really captured the nuance of what is going on in our relationship with screens that didn't exist five years ago.

And I think as scientists, it's really important to look at the new evidence.

And to consider that in terms of forming our opinions.

And as a researcher, I do think that a lot of the guidelines should be updated to reflect using screens as sleep aids.

Yeah, there's a sleep timer on TVs for a reason.

Yeah, exactly.

Because they have a button on the remote.

Something that's really interesting about bedtime procrastination or sleep procrastination is that habit comes into it.

So the way that we use habit or the term habit in science is kind of different to how we use it in everyday life.

In everyday life, we just kind of use it to describe anything that we do.

But in research, it's this invisible force that

controls our behavior in a way that we don't think so if you say you're doing something on autopilot or you did something without thinking that is habit coming into play so for example if you just pick up your phone and all of a sudden you're in instagram and you don't remember unlocking your phone you don't remember hitting the app icon suddenly you're just there that is habit at work because you have just kind of non-consciously got into this app

The really interesting thing with bedtime procrastination is a lot of people do it for an extended period of time.

So we're not talking about 20 or 30 minutes before they go to bed.

I mean like two hours or two and a half hours past when they wanted to go to bed to get up for work in the morning and they haven't even thought about it.