Trial reportProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Evening use of light-emitting eReaders negatively affects sleep, circadian timing, and next-morning alertness.
Trial report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT05555186 (Effect of School Based Ambient Bright White Light Intervention on Adolescents´ Sleep Quality, Depression and Mood), which is not on this map. Cited by 536 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Effect of School Based Ambient Bright White Light Intervention on Adolescents´ Sleep Quality, Depression and Mood
Who cites it
536 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 1,302 citations in OpenAlex.
- Digital screen exposure and migraine burden: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Journal of neurology · 2026Pooled it
- Efficacy of blue-light blocking glasses on actigraphic sleep outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled crossover trials.Frontiers in neurology · 2025Pooled it
- Effects of unsupervised campus HIIT on fitness and sleep in sedentary male students: a randomized controlled trial.BMC public health · 2026Trial
- Nighttime Sensory-Behavioral Activation and Admission Suicidality in Young Inpatients With Major Depressive Disorder: A Retrospective Clinical-Record Study.Suicide & life-threatening behavior · 2026Article
- The effect of technology use on sleep quality in primary school-aged children.Arquivos de neuro-psiquiatria · 2026Article
- Blue-Light Filters in Eye Care: A State-of-the-Art Review.Medical sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Exploring the Impact of Digital Behaviours on Mental Health: Tools and Intervention for Gen Z.Annals of neurosciences · 2026Article
- Central and Bridge Symptoms of Internet Gaming Disorder, Social Jet Lag, and Insomnia Among College Students: Cross-Sectional Network Analysis.JMIR serious games · 2026Article
- The Mediating Roles of Sleep Quality and Physical Activity in the Association Between Smartphone Addiction and Physical Fitness Among College Students.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Investigating the Combined Effect of Artificial Light at Night and Noise on Sleep Quality of High School Students.Journal of sleep research · 2026Article
- Detecting the Non-Dipper Phenotype in Adolescents Exposed to Nighttime Screen Use-Digital Chronotoxicity as a Proposed Integrative Framework: A Narrative Review of Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring, Subclinical Biomarkers, and Emerging Wearable and AI-Based Screening.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Sleep and light ecologies of parents with young infants: descriptive findings from the SUNSHINE project.Npj biological timing and sleep · 2026Article
- Association Between Screen Exposure and Insomnia Among Patients With Breast Cancer: Cross-Sectional Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Beyond Screen Time: A Measurement Framework for Behavioral Exposures in Childhood Myopia.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Light exposure and sleep architecture in real-world settings.Npj biological timing and sleep · 2026Article
- Review
- High-resolution monitoring reveals fragmented 24-hour light exposure in intensive care units.Critical care (London, England) · 2026Observational
- Replication of acne susceptibility loci and gene-environment interactions with screen time in Singapore and Malaysia Chinese population.JID innovations : skin science from molecules to population health · 2026Article
- The Effect of Migration on Perceived Safety and Sleep Quality: An Analysis From Rural and Urban Indigenous Wixárika Communities in Jalisco, Mexico.American journal of biological anthropology · 2026Article
- Sleep Bruxism, Pharmacotherapy, Sleep Aspects and Screen Use in Children and Adolescents With Down Syndrome: A Cluster Analysis.Journal of applied research in intellectual disabilities : JARID · 2026Article
476 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
In the past 50 y, there has been a decline in average sleep duration and quality, with adverse consequences on general health. A representative survey of 1,508 American adults recently revealed that 90% of Americans used some type of electronics at least a few nights per week within 1 h before bedtime. Mounting evidence from countries around the world shows the negative impact of such technology use on sleep. This negative impact on sleep may be due to the short-wavelength-enriched light emitted by these electronic devices, given that artificial-light exposure has been shown experimentally to produce alerting effects, suppress melatonin, and phase-shift the biological clock. A few reports have shown that these devices suppress melatonin levels, but little is known about the effects on circadian phase or the following sleep episode, exposing a substantial gap in our knowledge of how this increasingly popular technology affects sleep. Here we compare the biological effects of reading an electronic book on a light-emitting device (LE-eBook) with reading a printed book in the hours before bedtime. Participants reading an LE-eBook took longer to fall asleep and had reduced evening sleepiness, reduced melatonin secretion, later timing of their circadian clock, and reduced next-morning alertness than when reading a printed book. These results demonstrate that evening exposure to an LE-eBook phase-delays the circadian clock, acutely suppresses melatonin, and has important implications for understanding the impact of such technologies on sleep, performance, health, and safety.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.