How to Stop Scrolling in Bed at Night and Actually Get Some Sleep
Still scrolling in bed at midnight? Moving the phone out of the bedroom fixes most of it, and the rest comes down to what you're really reaching for in the dark.
By Your Bro · · Self Improvement
It's pushing midnight, your wife fell asleep an hour ago, and you're lying there with the phone a few inches from your face watching some guy in Ohio power wash a driveway like it's the Super Bowl. You told yourself you'd put it down after 1 more video. You said that around 10:30.
The way to stop scrolling in bed at night is to quit asking a tired brain to make a good decision. Charge the phone somewhere other than the bedroom and buy a cheap alarm clock so you've got no excuse to go get it. Willpower at 11 PM is a losing bet for most guys, so everything below is about setting your night up so you barely need any.
Why the phone wins every night
Think about the kind of man you are at 7 in the morning compared to the guy lying in bed at 11. In the morning you've got some fight in you. By the end of a long day, after work and getting the kids down, your brain is cooked, and a cooked brain takes the easy road every single time. The apps know that about you, too. I've written before about how social media is built to manipulate you, and the feed doesn't care one bit that you have to be up at 6. It'll keep serving you the next thing until you physically put the phone down.
Remember Gremlins? Billy gets 1 rule with Gizmo, which is never feed him after midnight, and when that rule gets broken the whole town gets torn apart by little green maniacs. Your phone works about the same way. Nothing good comes out of it late at night, and the scroll has a funny way of drifting from sports highlights into stuff you wouldn't want your wife seeing over your shoulder. Most guys swear they're just checking the score (hint: the game ended 2 hours ago).
Get the phone out of the bedroom
This is the whole ballgame, so don't skip it. Pick a spot in the kitchen or the hallway, put a charger there, and that's where the phone sleeps from now on. If your first thought is "but I use it as my alarm," come on, man. They still sell alarm clocks, a basic one costs less than a large pizza, and it doesn't have Instagram on it.
Pro tip: plug the phone in when you start brushing your teeth. If you wait until you're already under the covers to go put it away, you won't do it. You'll tell yourself you'll get up in 5 minutes and we both know how that story ends. And if you're worried about missing a call from the babysitter or your mom, turn the ringer up. You'll hear it from the hallway just fine, and you can't scroll from there.
Give your hands something else to do
The phone is filling a gap, and if you yank it without putting anything in its place you'll be right back on it inside a week. Mindless scrolling made my list of time wasting habits for a reason, so swap it for something that doesn't glow. Keep a real paperback on the nightstand. It doesn't need to be some heavy philosophy book either, a cheesy thriller works fine as long as it puts you to sleep.
Some nights the better move is to roll over and actually talk to your wife. Plenty of men complain that the bedroom has gone quiet while they spend the last hour of every night with their face lit up blue 2 feet away from her… she notices that, believe me. Other guys write tomorrow's to do list on a notepad so their brain stops chewing on it, or say a quick prayer and call it a night. Whatever you pick, do it the same way every night so it turns into something you don't have to think about.
When it isn't really about the scrolling
Be honest with yourself for a second. Is it the power washing videos keeping you up, or is it what the feed turns into once it's late, you're bored, and nobody's watching? For a lot of men it's the second one, and if that's you, moving the phone is a good start but you'll need more than a charger in the kitchen. I laid out a bigger plan in How to Stop Watching Porn and Reclaim Your Brain, and it's worth your time.
There's another reason guys reach for the phone in the dark, and it's the worrying. The house finally gets quiet and every bill and every worst case scenario you can dream up shows up at once, so you grab the phone to drown it out. I wrote about that habit of rehearsing disaster in Bro Chat #161, Your Brain Is Practicing What You Fear, and scrolling until your eyes give out doesn't fix any of it, it just pushes the worrying back to 2 AM.
If you want some structure while you break the late night habit, I put together a free 30 day Kill Your Lust Demon challenge. It takes you through it a day at a time and doesn't cost you anything, so you may as well start tonight.
If you slip
You probably will, most likely on some stressful Tuesday when the phone somehow ends up back on the nightstand. Don't make a big production out of it and don't decide the whole plan is dead. Put the charger back in the kitchen the next night and keep going, and if you still haven't bought that alarm clock, go grab one on your lunch break tomorrow.