How can I stop feeling guilty about my evening screen time? [part six]

Most information about sleep, whether it’s a seemingly helpful TikTok or a brochure from your GP, seems to end with a list of rules. (Or a ‘protocol’, if it’s a bro-length podcast). Don’t use your phone one hour before bed, for example. Avoid caffeine six hours before sleep. Such generalisations are somewhat inevitable when recommendations need to be made at scale. But for many of us, I don’t think more rules are what’s needed. What’s missing is nuance: who we are, how we feel, how our very human lives shape our health.

Throughout this series, we’ve explored why evening screen time isn’t necessarily the nemesis of good sleep, and even how your personality shapes your nights. We’ve talked about why you can feel okay about your habits: the type of content you watch before bed doesn’t tend to disrupt sleep, perhaps bedtime procrastination isn’t inherently disastrous. And yet, many of us still feel bad about our sleep. Much of this guilt comes from misconceptions, like that all evening screen time is harmful, or that anything short of eight hours’ sleep is a failure (more than seven hours is generally recommended, and even that varies between individuals).

This final post looks beyond guilt, and the possibility that kindness (rather than stricter rules) might shape our evenings more than we realise. It’s an idea that I’ve been trying to bring to my own evenings, too.

Self-compassion is a poster child of great research outcomes. It’s linked to lower stress and anxiety, better sleep outcomes, and better health overall. But, like many concepts in psychology research, I find “self-compassion” somewhat vague. What, actually, is it?

Self-compassion is broadly described as being kind of yourself. Much research in this area was pioneered by Dr Kristin Neff, who defines it as having three elements:

1. Self-kindness (vs self-criticism)

2. Common humanity (vs isolation)

3. And mindfulness (vs over-identification)

Though even as someone familiar with this research for years, I still find it hard to grasp what increasing self-compassion looks like in our everyday lives. How can we actually be kind to ourselves in ways that might improve our health?

A recent randomised controlled trial (RCT) tackled this question by asking whether an online self-compassion intervention could reduce bedtime procrastination. Interestingly, it didn’t try to directly change sleep behaviour by a strategy like setting a bedtime. Instead, it targeted emotional barriers like self-blame and self-criticism to see if cultivating, basically, indirect good vibes could improve sleep timing.

The researchers randomised 459 young adults in China into either a waitlist or a 14-day self-compassion program, involving short daily videos and guided audio practices. The program was based on loving-kindness meditation: where you focus on self-kindness, normalising struggles, and recognising common humanity in others. (I’ve done loving-kindness meditation, and, for example, a video might have you repeat phrases like, “may I be safe, may I be healthy, and may I live with ease,” and then extend those wishes to friends, neighbours, and eventually towards somebody you loathe).

Compared to the waitlist, participants in the intervention group saw increases in self-compassion, how often they experienced pleasant emotional states, and something called future self-continuity (basically how connected someone feels to their future self). And - alongside these results - participants reported moderate reductions in bedtime procrastination.

The intervention was broad, and doesn’t suggest that self-compassion can “fix” sleep problems. But I think there’s an intriguing practical takeaway: that reducing self-criticism and increasing pleasant emotions may loosen a pattern of bedtime procrastination.

In everyday life, compassion and being gentle on yourself can look surprisingly small. It might mean reminding yourself that difficulty disengaging at night is very common, and acknowledging why sleep matters for your future self without thinking your current behaviour is “bad”.

Self-compassion can be catching yourself doomscrolling and acknowledging the need behind it, by thinking “hey, this makes sense. Today was stressful, and I wanted to unwind. Tomorrow’s a new day.”

By removing the self-criticism and being kinder about sleep lapses, earlier bedtimes may become easier to choose next time, rather than something you try to force in the moment.

Personally, this shift in mindset is how I approach screen time research more broadly. Screen time is often framed as a negative, awful indulgence that’s a failure of willpower. But as a researcher, it’s crucial to approach topics without judgement (if you want any chance of designing a study minimal in bias!).

So I’ve wondered: What does our desire to doom scroll at 11pm or watch YouTube videos into the early hours tell us about ourselves? In some ways, it reveals what we need when our energy is at its lowest: me-time, a smooth brain activity, connection, entertainment. In my own peer-reviewed research, many people describe using screens to wind-down because they lack me-time during the day.

And crucially, much research suggests that the panic around evening screen time – from the effects of blue light to the impact of suspenseful content – may not be entirely justified. Yet, people still feel guilty about screen habits.

I used to behave like a little bedtime gremlin, hiding my phone under the covers because I felt my habits were unhygienic. But after my own research and looking at the latest science, I’ve realised that shame was – possibly – doing more damage than my evening screen time.

My late-night screen time was often just a need for autonomy after a demanding day. And applying self-compassion – reminding myself that this struggle is common and visualising our future self with kindness rather than moral pressure – may help to break this pattern.

And if you do really struggle with stopping content and getting to bed at a reasonable hour, you shouldn’t just give up on changing your habits. Changing behaviour and building new routines takes time, and it can often be harder in the evenings. But building evening screen habits that work for you aren’t impossible.

I know this because my bedtime gremlin behaviour has evolved. I use a tablet to wind down – with crossword puzzles, Duolingo, and audiobooks as sleep aids. And this makes an earlier bedtime feel like a choice that I’m making for myself.

Look, I’m not perfect. There are nights when I procrastinate bedtime and use my phone in bed. Even though I’m an expert in the science of this, it still happens.

But then I remind myself that: occasionally it’s not that bad. And tomorrow, after all, is a new day.