Welcome Slides

Hello. And good evening. My name is Johnny Kidd.

I'm a freshman student at Leon University

and I'm gonna be talking about social media,

um, and the overuse of our phones before bed

and how that affects our circadian rhythm

and our sleep cycles overall.

So, first of all,

do any of you ever feel like this

tired,

lazy, sleepy, drowsy

on a day where you slept well? Or at least you thought you slept well

and you should be decently energized.

Might have the answer.

I will be talking about social media

and the use of our phones before then

the overuse of social media and our

cell phones can severely impact our sleep regimens

and sleep cycles.

Um, as I had said before,

how is this possible? You may ask,

this is possible because of three main things.

The use of our phones right before bed leaves us susceptible to a

dopamine loops

b too much blue light

and C

suppression of Melton.

Let's talk about that.

So firstly, any guesses as to what this chemical may be

can't get it.

This is Melatonin, this is the chemical compound right here

for Melatonin.

Uh What is Melatonin? You may ask,

uh me, melatonin is the natural chemical,

the brain has to release to the rest of the body.

In order for your brain to tell your body

it's time to sleep. It's time to relax.

It's it's time to enter a state of rest.

As you can

probably imagine. Melatonin is crucial.

It's crucial uh for the body to enter the, the circadian rhythm.

Um and it's overall just extremely important

um in order to help us get into our sleep cycle

as fast as possible as well as maintain

um good quality sleep and not be disrupted, not wake up

a question. I'm gonna, I'm gonna propose is if Melatonin was impacted,

wouldn't you think that would change our sleep?

The pretty simple answer is yes.

Um When Melatonin is impacted,

um that changes our sleep

and believe it or not, the second thing I'm gonna talk about

is light

um which impacts Melatonin.

So blue light is the light that comes from our devices.

Um Any of our screens, tablets, TV, S

any of that blue light is the light coming from our screens,

believe it or not,

uh The blue light from our devices suppresses

the uh chemical compound melatonin

um and makes it harder for us to fall asleep

and stay asleep.

Um An article written by the CDC states that blue light

has the strongest impact exposure to blue light during the sensitive period,

sensitive period would, would be, you know, before bed or waking up

um can make it difficult for you to fall asleep and

stay asleep.

So, as I have said before, blue light um severely impacts melatonin suppresses it.

And we've explained how crucial

melatonin is um

to our sleep cycle.

The next chemical compound I'm gonna talk about a little bit

is dopamine.

Um So before I, I will get into what exactly dopamine is

um

when we think of dopamine, we think of

um a positive chemical,

something that's good for our bodies to have something that's, you know,

good to have as much as possible.

Um

Although not, that's not completely wrong.

Uh That's, that's not completely correct either.

Um Dopamine is the natural, feel

good chemical.

Our bodies release it when we're happy

when we're feeling intense emotions and dopamine is extremely important.

The problem

with dopamine

is when it's released

and specifically how it's being released.

Um social media is a very stimulating

um thing. It's

created to be stimulating and engaging to keep

us coming back and wanting more and more,

which is OK.

The problem is it

that creates what's called a dopamine loop.

Um The process of

gaining and then releasing dopamine over and over back over again.

Uh The problem with this is

dopamine and Melatonin do not mix, mix very well.

Do what?

So dopamine isn't

uh releasing dopamine

isn't necessarily a problem in itself, like I I said before, however,

dopamine and Melatonin don't work together uh at all

Melatonin is attempting to slow down your heart rate

um and prepare you for rest, prepare you for sleep.

Um While dopamine on the other, on the other side, on the other spectrum

uh does the exact same opposite uh speeds up your heart rate,

makes you excited, makes you happy.

Um If you scroll through social media

uh right before bed,

um you will release dopamine

um and that will make it only harder for you to sleep because it is combating

um that Melatone

additionally, uh like I said before, the content

on social media can be uh stimulating and engaging um

making us locked in.

Um There's a reason that on something, you know, like, like Netflix, for example,

after a show uh next episode pops up right away and if we don't touch anything,

it immediately goes into the next episode.

Um And you know, that's,

that's a prime example where certain social media apps or media apps in general.

Um like Netflix,

they wanna keep you locked in, they wanna keep you tied in.

Um They want to stimulate you to keep you coming and, and, and, and most importantly,

they just don't want you to pull away.

Um And social media apps are created the same way

on an app like Instagram or tiktok.

There is the uh for you page application that we, we all I'm sure know very well.

Uh The for you application

is a feature on social media apps where um media that you see is directly

um

curated and it's catered for you

to you. Um which, which it is, it appeals to what you wanna see, it entertains you

um which is strategic by social media companies

uh because they know what they're doing

and what they're doing is they're appealing to

our

dopamine.

Um They're

um you know, making us view their things, not making us view their things, but

they're putting the things out there that we want to see

and in return,

we're gonna release, we're gonna release dopamine and,

and we're gonna stay engaged

next, I'm talking about the relationships that we all have on our phones.

Um

I've researched a similar topic, not the exact same topic,

um but less about sleep more just the relationship that my generation has

um with our phones and it's a problem.

Um, since the pandemic, um you know,

numbers and anxiety and depression have skyrocketed

and although, um,

the, you know, naturally because of the pandemic pandemic, that was gonna happen,

um It was a very scary time.

Um, we were forced to our phones and social media,

um and in media

ways in order to interact and to stay connected

uh with each other when we were uh quarantined and

separated for such a long and scary time.

So there we, we were able to see the relationship that my,

um my generation really everyone has with their cell phones

and the consensus is it's too much.

Um, we are on our cell phones way too much. We are on social media, too much.

And from this there has stemmed many issues.

Um, and, and one of them is

sleep.

So

one of, one of my final messages would be,

I think we should all self reflect on the

relationship that we have with our cell phones.

Um, whether that's, you know, analyzing screen time

and noticing exactly

how much we're on our phones and exactly how much we're spending on each application

that can be very crucial in us to understand, you know,

things we need to weed out or things that may be necessary and we can't get rid of.

For example, for me, I've noticed that tiktok,

all it brings me a short time happiness

and

the constant dopamine roller roller coaster.

Um You know, I, I, I log on to the app.

There's things that I like to see that I'm entertained by,

I school for hours and what do I do? I waste time.

Um,

and not like tiktok is,

although I'm, I'm, you know, losing some informational benefits and

um I'm not always

immediately um informed with what's going on.

Um

I have more time and I'm spending my time more wisely because I'm not being

um stimulated and attract

attracted to.

Finally,

I'm gonna talk about constant notifications.

Um I'm sure this hap has happened to all of us, um

where we've woken up to the buzz of our phone.

Um maybe a phone call, maybe a Twitter tweet.

Um

notifications on our phones are constantly popping up and stimulating us.

And

it is crucial that when we go to bed,

it's really important for healthy sleep to stay asleep.

Um Once we reach our rem cycle,

um we wanna stay in that rem cycle and not notifications, things that stimulate us.

Uh If they pull us out of that rem cycle, if we wake up,

uh we might not ever get back to the RM cycle or we,

we just might not get to the same quality of sleep um that we are achieving in, in,

in full rem,

so constant, um you know,

social media notifications and reminders can disturb sleep 100%

by just naturally interrupting the sleep cycle.

Um So

to, to kind of wrap things up a solution would be a couple of things.

Um First of all,

something I like to live by is the four first and last hour rule. I like to call it.

Um I try to stay away from me from social media and

my phone overall for the first and last hour of the day.

Um I think it's most important before bed.

You know, obviously,

I've just explained all that information and why

it can really affect your sleep cycle.

Um But I think this is a really easy rule to abide by,

then it can really

improve your mental health. Uh It will 100% improve your sleep.

Um You know, you, you're, you're not gonna be soaking up so much blue light,

you're not gonna be stimulated,

you're not gonna have a lot of dopamine in you.

And then in terms of staying away from social media in the morning,

um,

a lot of us like I have for many years, I've immediately, as soon as I've woken up,

you know, ran to my phone immediately logged in,

um scrolled through notifications, which is

a really unhealthy thing that the first thing we

do when we wake up before we treat ourselves,

before we reflect on the previous day or really whatever, we're just

jumping into social media in another world

that

we need, we need to slow that down.

Um So like I said,

my first piece of advice uh as a solution would be the first and last hour rule,

cut out social media for the last hour of your day

and for the first

and then finally would be

um

the night shift uh setting.

So if you navigate settings and turn on night shift,

if you are on your phone before going to bed,

um this is crucial, turn on night shift, it cuts down,

I think completely on blue light.

Um

That way you're, you're completely cutting that factor out of your, you know,

sleep regimen

and you're not soaking in all of that

and suppressing melatonin.

So that's all I have to say. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you so much, Professor Villanova

and I look forward to seeing you guys soon.

Welcome Slides

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