Is Your Smartphone Addiction Sabotaging Your Skin?
Dermatologists reveal how your cell may be affecting your complexion.
Google "digital detox," and you’ll get millions of hits—clickbait headlines and 12-step plans from everyone from, well, Cosmopolitan to Forbes to Goop. But despite all that’s been written about the digital-detox trend, the average adult still logs more than 10 hours of screen time every day, according to a 2016 Nielsen Total Audience Report—and the habit is dulling more than your brain cells.
Allow me to explain: Basically, when you tap the home button on your phone, and the screen brightens, that glow is called visible light—aptly named, since unlike other light forms, like ultraviolet (UV) and infrared rays, you can actually see it.
The visible light spectrum is divided into various colors, each with its own wavelength. The dynamic, short-wavelength blue/violet band is known as high-energy visible light, or HEV light, a growing buzzword in the beauty world.
And no, HEV isn't another marketing ploy—there’s actually real science at play here. “We’ve always focused on the damage done by UV rays,” says Steven Q. Wang, MD, the director of dermatologic surgery and dermatology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Basking Ridge, NJ, and co-founder of Dr. Wang Herbal Skincare.
According to Marmur, “it’s more likely that behaviors directly related to staring at a screen for prolonged stretches impact the skin more than the blue wavelength of light radiating from our devices. Fatigue, irritability, boredom, overeating, stagnation, lack of fresh air, monotony—these are not good for wellness overall and can breed odd habits, like scratching, picking, and eye-rubbing.” Constantly peering down at your phone can strain your neck too, by the way (but we’re guessing you’ve already read a post or 10 about #techneck).
Putting aside any potential threat from blue light, here’s a good example of how compulsive screen-centric behaviors—like updating your feeds well into the wee hours and, thus, sacrificing sleep—can wreck your skin. The chronic fatigue that inevitably results from those late-night scroll sessions “can disrupt your cortisol rhythms, heightening stress, which has been shown to increase water loss in the skin, promoting dehydration, wrinkles, and overall sluggish cell turnover processes,” Marmur explains.
